Amazon Image Requirements by Marketplace: Going International
When you expand a listing from amazon.com to a new country, the first question is usually the wrong one. Sellers ask what the image requirements are on amazon.de or amazon.co.jp — as if each marketplace enforces a different rulebook for pixels. It mostly doesn't. The technical specs that govern a product image — the resolution, the file format, the white-background hero — travel across marketplaces almost unchanged. What doesn't travel is the content: the language your buyers read, the amount of detail they expect, and which images do the persuading. Getting international right is less about meeting a new spec and more about localising what's inside images that already pass.
The rules that stay the same
Amazon's baseline image standards are consistent enough that if your US gallery is built well, it already clears the bar abroad. The pieces that carry from marketplace to marketplace:
- Resolution for zoom. Amazon wants your longest side at 1000 pixels or larger so the hover-to-zoom feature works. That's the number worth remembering; below it, buyers can't inspect the product closely, and inspection is where images earn their keep. Larger is fine and generally better.
- The main image. Your first image — the hero — is expected to be the product on a pure white background, filling most of the frame, with no added text, badges, logos or props. This convention is the same in every marketplace, which is convenient: your hero shot is the one image you almost never need to localise.
- Format and framing. Standard web formats, the product square in the frame, real photography over illustration for the main shot. These are habits of a good gallery, not country-specific rules.
The takeaway: don't rebuild your gallery per country. The scaffolding is shared. What you localise is the text baked into the images past the hero — and how much of it each audience expects to see.
What changes per marketplace
The hero stays English-free and universal. Everything behind it — infographics, size charts, comparison grids, benefit callouts — is where a marketplace's expectations show up, because that's where the words live.
Germany
The DACH region rewards thoroughness. German buyers tend to read carefully and expect specifics — exact measurements, materials, certifications, what's included — laid out plainly rather than implied. A half-localised gallery, where the title is German but the size chart is still in English, reads as unfinished to an audience that notices. Translate the detail-dense images first and translate them completely. More on that market's expectations on the Germany page.
France
French shoppers show a strong preference for shopping in their own language, and an English infographic on amazon.fr is a visible signal that the listing wasn't really made for them. The priority here is completeness of language over volume of detail — every callout, label and chart in clean French. See the France page for how that shapes an image set.
Japan
Japan is the marketplace where image expectations diverge most from the US. Japanese product listings lean into dense, information-rich infographics — buyers expect a lot of the decision to be made inside the images, with detailed annotations, spec breakdowns and reassurances packed in. A sparse Western gallery can feel thin there. This is less about translating fewer images and more about respecting that images do heavier lifting. The Japan page covers that norm.
Mexico
The trap in Latin America is assuming one Spanish fits all. Mexican Spanish differs from the Spanish of Spain in vocabulary, phrasing and tone, and a listing localised for amazon.es can read as subtly off on amazon.com.mx. Translating for Mexico means translating to Mexican Spanish, not reusing your European Spanish set. The Mexico page goes into that distinction.
The pattern across all four: the image slots are the same, but what belongs in them shifts with the audience's language and how much detail they expect to find before they'll buy.
What to localize first
You don't have to translate a whole gallery on day one, and you shouldn't. Some images move the needle far more than others when a buyer can suddenly read them.
Start with infographics and size charts. A size or fit chart is the single highest-impact image to localise — a buyer who can't read the measurements simply won't risk the order, and no amount of translated bullet text rescues that. Right behind it come feature and benefit callouts (the annotated shot naming what the product does) and comparison tables, both of which are pure persuasion made of words.
Leave the hero shot for last, or skip it entirely — it's a text-free product-on-white image, so there's nothing in it to translate. The same goes for lifestyle photos with no annotations and any image whose only text is your brand name, which reads identically in every language. Sorting your gallery into "carries selling text" and "doesn't" before you start is what keeps a localisation project small: you translate the three or four images that actually close the sale, not all nine.
Doing it without a designer
The reason sellers ship English images abroad is that the old fix meant rebuilding each one from a source file that's usually long gone. There's a faster path that skips the rebuild. Paste an ASIN on the Amazon workflow and the listing's existing gallery loads automatically — no downloading and re-uploading your own images. You select the images that carry selling text, choose the marketplaces you're entering, and each one is remade with the text localised in place: same layout, same colours, only the language changed. Every marketplace variant is produced independently from your original image, so a detail-heavy German version never contaminates the French one.
A minute or two later you get a ZIP back with the files named per marketplace, so you always know which image belongs to amazon.de versus amazon.com.mx. One thing to be clear about: the tool never touches your live listing or your Seller Central account. It hands you finished image files, and you upload them yourself, attaching each localised set to the right marketplace — exactly as you would with anything made in-house.
The cost model makes it safe to start small. Your first image is free, so you can localise a single size chart into German and judge the result before committing. After that it's one credit per finished image, and a failed image costs nothing — you only ever pay for a result you keep. Begin with your best seller's most important infographic on the Amazon workflow, see it in the target language, and check pricing when you're ready to localise the rest of your catalog.