Logo watermark size and placement for product photos

Several marketplaces reject logos, text or watermarks added to a listing image in editing. Google Merchant Center lists “Overlays and watermarks: Stock photo watermarks, copyright symbols, or graphic stamps” and “Superimposed logos or store names added in post-production” as disallowed, along with borders and promotional text (checked 2026-11-06). eBay’s picture policy does not allow “Watermarks of any type, including those used for ownership attributions” or “Photos with added text, artwork or marketing material” (checked 2026-11-06).

Amazon’s product image guide requires the main image to show the product as 85% of the frame on a pure white background, allows a lifestyle main image only for a few product types “with no text or extra logos”, and states “No text or pricing details (swatch image only)” for all product images (checked 2026-11-06). Etsy does not ban watermarks but says “While some sellers use watermarks, we generally wouldn’t recommend them”: watermarked photos are left out of features such as Etsy Finds emails and of off-site ads such as Google Shopping (checked 2026-11-06). Taobao’s listing rules forbid pure-text images and say text overlays must not cover the product (checked 2026-11-06).

Those rules cover the listing photos the platform serves. A logo belongs on the copies you publish elsewhere: your own store, social posts, wholesale catalogues, previews sent to a supplier before a deal is signed, and additional images where a platform allows them. Keep an unmarked master of every photo.

If the only goal is to make a photo harder to lift, repeated text covers more of the frame than one logo. The batch text watermark tool tiles a short line across up to 50 images; this guide is about one brand mark placed once per image.

Pixel sizes do not transfer between a 1,000 px thumbnail and a 4,000 px master, so size the logo relative to the image. In the product image watermark tool the logo scale runs from 5% to 60% of the image width and a batch starts at 18%; the single-image logo tool starts at 20%. For most catalogue shots, 12% to 20% stays legible at thumbnail size without competing with the product. Go below 10% only for a large image and a simple logo, and above 25% only for previews meant to look unfinished. Check the result at the size buyers see: a logo that reads well at 2,000 px can become a smudge in a 200 px thumbnail.

A corner keeps the product clear. Leave a margin of at least 3% to 5% of the image width between the logo and the edges, so a slight platform crop or a rounded thumbnail corner does not clip it. Pick one corner and keep it for the whole batch; the set then reads as a series. The tool’s default is bottom-right, away from the titles and badges many layouts put at the top.

For a preview or quote image that must not be used as a finished asset, a centred logo is harder to crop away and signals that the file is not final. Diagonal rotation strengthens that signal but costs legibility, so test it on a light and a dark background first.

The tool starts at 85% opacity. On a white-background shot, 70% to 90% keeps the logo readable while the surface shows through; on busy lifestyle images, go to 90% or 100% so the mark does not dissolve into the texture. Do not drop below 50% for anything meant to identify the source: a ghost logo is the first thing lost to compression and small screens.

Platforms crop and resize. Instagram uploads photos at up to 1080 pixels wide and keeps a photo between 320 and 1080 px wide at its own resolution as long as the aspect ratio is between 1.91:1 and 3:4; anything outside that range is cropped (checked 2026-11-06). Meta’s ad specification for the Instagram feed is 4:5 at 1440 × 1800 px with a minimum width of 500 px, a figure for ad placements rather than organic posts (checked 2026-11-06). Keep the logo inside the part of a landscape frame that survives a 1:1 or 4:5 crop, away from the far left and right edges.

Use a PNG with a transparent background so the logo sits on the product rather than in a box; the tool accepts JPG, PNG and WebP logos up to 25 MB. Export it with enough pixels to stay sharp at 20% of your largest master, and prefer a one- or two-colour version, since fine gradients and thin strokes vanish at thumbnail size.

Set the scale, corner, margin and opacity once on a typical image, then run the batch of up to 50 files. An image with an unusual crop, a product reaching into the chosen corner or a low-contrast background can take an individual placement override, and can be reset to the global placement later. Review the queue once before exporting the ZIP.

Run through this list once per batch; it catches the mistakes that are expensive to fix after upload.