Photographing secondhand clothes so they sell and arrive as pictured

Every new item of the same style looks the same, so one sample photo can stand in for all of them. Secondhand doesn't work that way: each piece carries its own signs of wear, and the photos are the only proof of what the buyer will get. Every shot therefore has to be of the exact piece you will ship, not a brand's website photo or another piece of the same style. Those show a new item, and usually belong to the photographer or the brand.

The big marketplaces limit how many photos you get. Shopee's quality listing criteria page, dated 23 September 2025, allows up to 9 images including the cover, and the TikTok Shop Product Listing Guidelines, dated 16 March 2026, allow up to 9 square images, according to the pages we read on 20 September 2026. The table below fits the shots you need into 9 slots, in the order they should appear in a listing.

If there are more flaws than slots left, drop the fabric shot and the hanging shot first, or show flaws that sit close together in one photo. Whenever you run out of slots, cut the pretty shots first, never the flaws. If the garment has no flaws at all, use slots 5–7 for the inside of the collar, the underarms and the cuffs, to show that the places that usually wear first are still clean.

Before you pick up the camera, go over the garment by the window one part at a time and note every flaw you find. On worn clothes, flaws tend to sit where a full-length shot can't see them.

A flaw in the photo should look the way it looks to the eye: no bigger, and no fainter.

• Get close enough to show what kind of flaw it is, but keep a nearby seam, button or edge in the frame, so buyers can tell where on the garment it is

• Rest a finger beside the flaw, or put a coin next to it, to show how big it is, and don't let your finger cover the flaw itself

• Holes, pilling and loose threads show up best with light coming from the side; stains and fading read truer in light that falls evenly across the fabric

• Don't crop a flaw out of a distant shot. A crop keeps very little detail, so step closer and shoot again instead

• Don't edit a flaw to look fainter. A flaw photo is there to tell the truth, not to look good

Sizes on labels differ between brands and countries, and some fabrics shrink once they have been washed, so tape-measured numbers are more reliable than the letter on a label. Lay the garment flat, smooth it out without stretching the fabric, and measure:

• Chest: straight across from one underarm to the other

• Length: from the highest point of the shoulder, next to the collar, down to the hem

• Shoulders: from one shoulder seam to the other; sleeves: from the shoulder seam to the end of the cuff

• Trousers and skirts: waist, hips and length, plus the width of the leg opening for trousers

• Always say the measurements were taken flat. A flat chest, waist or hip figure is roughly half the all-round measurement, and without that note a buyer can be out by a factor of two

• Photograph the tape lying on the garment so the numbers can be read. That photo is the proof that the figures you wrote came from this piece

• Shoot in daylight by a window with the flash and the room lights off. Mixing two kinds of light shifts the colour

• Turn off filters and beauty modes in the camera app, and don't adjust the colour afterwards. A faded shirt that looks vivid in the photo is a shirt the buyer won't recognise when it arrives

• Photograph a sheet of white paper once in the same light to keep for reference. If the paper looks yellow or blue in a shot, the garment's colour in that shot has shifted the same way

• Use a plain background in a colour not close to the garment's own, so the edges don't melt into it

• Keep the same background, angle and distance for every piece. The shop reads as one set, and buyers can compare pieces easily

Shopee's cover-image rules, on a page dated 23 September 2025, make the same point: the image must not be edited so that the product looks different from reality, according to the page we read on 20 September 2026.

Finish every shot that needs the garment lying flat before you hang it. The garment gets handled as little as possible, and every shot gets the same light.

The listing text and the photos have to tell the same story. A photo showing a stain next to a note that says “like new” leaves buyers not knowing what to believe. Keep it short, but cover all of this:

• Say it's secondhand in the product title, not hidden in the last line

• List every flaw to match the photos: what it is, where it is, how noticeable it is and which photo shows it. For example: faint stain on the front hem, visible up close, see photo 5

• Say whether it has been washed. If a mark is still there after washing, say so, and buyers will know it didn't wash out

• Give the measurements, and say they were taken flat

• If you grade condition as a percentage, always add the list of flaws. A number on its own means different things to different people

• If the photos include anything you're not selling, such as a hanger, a belt or an inner top, say it isn't included

An AI-generated model photo helps a secondhand shop by showing how a piece looks when worn, from a single product photo, without finding someone to model a one-off item. But it is an image the AI draws from scratch, not a photograph of the piece you will ship, so it doesn't show the real size or fit — the tape measurements do that. Small flaws such as stains, pilling or tiny holes may not show up in it, and small lettering on a label can come out wrong.

In Plien Roob, the Product to Model and Ghost Mannequin tools instruct the AI to keep the wear, fading and cracked prints shown in your photo and not to make the item look new, but an instruction does not guarantee that every detail comes out right. The pair below is an example from our own system. The photo at the top of this page is also a result from our Virtual Try-On tool: it shows how an outfit looks on, but it can't show the condition of a real garment.

• AI photos are extra photos, not replacements. Every real condition shot in the table above still has to be there

• Put AI photos after the real ones, and don't use one as the cover

• Don't use an AI photo to hide a flaw, such as choosing a pose that covers a hole, or leading with an image in which a flaw has disappeared

• Say the image was made with AI. On Shopee, the Shopee AI Terms of Service, version dated 21 February 2568 in the Thai calendar (2025), require AI-generated content to be identified as such, according to the page we read on 20 September 2026