The same scene, three different objects — because what you make is not what anyone else makes.
Etsy flat-lay
Shot straight down on a warm textured surface with a few props at the edges — the look Etsy buyers already trust.
- Category
- Marketplace listings
- Shapes
- 1:1 3:4 4:3
- You get
- A still image
Send one photo of what you made and we restage that — we never invent an object. Extra angles only help when a scene shows a side your photo does not.
Try it freeThe camera looks straight down and the object lies flat on linen, pale wood or plaster, with a couple of quiet supporting things pushed out to the corners — a sprig, a folded cloth, a scattering of the material it is made from. Daylight comes in from one side, so the shadows all fall the same way and the surface texture reads.
This is Etsy's native language, and it is also how a handmade listing signals handmade without saying so. It suits candles, soap, jewellery, stationery, textiles and baked goods. It is the wrong scene for anything tall: a bottle photographed from directly above is a circle, and no amount of styling fixes that.
Lay the object on any flat surface and photograph it from directly above, with the phone parallel to the table rather than tilted. The props are ours to add — do not gather them. What we cannot fix is a shot taken at an angle, which puts a lean in the object that the flat-lay then has to fight.
