Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between a photo’s width and height, expressed as a ratio like 4:3 or 16:9, and it determines whether a photo displays as landscape, portrait, or square.
A photo’s aspect ratio matters because different places a photo gets used expect different shapes: a marketplace gallery, a social post, and a printed window sticker don’t all crop the same way, and a photo shot in the wrong ratio for its destination usually gets cropped automatically, sometimes cutting off exactly the part of the vehicle that mattered.
Marketplaces are inconsistent about publishing an actual ratio requirement. Cars.com is a rare exception with a clear published rule: photos must be in “landscape (i.e., horizontal) orientation.” BoatWizard, which powers Boat Trader, YachtWorld, and boats.com, goes further and states an actual ratio: a recommended size of “2160 x 1440 pixels (3:2 aspect ratio),” with a stated minimum of “1080 x 720 pixels” at the same 3:2 ratio.
Shooting consistently in one aspect ratio across all photos in a listing also matters for how a gallery reads together — a mix of portrait phone photos and landscape shots in the same gallery looks disorganized even if every individual photo is fine on its own, so matching ratios across a listing is worth doing even where a marketplace doesn’t require it outright.
Questions
Aspect ratio, answered.
Do all marketplaces require the same aspect ratio?
No — most don’t publish a specific ratio requirement at all. Cars.com requires landscape orientation, and BoatWizard (Boat Trader, YachtWorld, boats.com) recommends a specific 3:2 ratio, but plenty of others leave it unstated.
What happens if a photo doesn’t match the aspect ratio a site expects?
It’s usually cropped automatically to fit, which can cut off part of the vehicle if the crop lands in the wrong place — matching the expected ratio before upload avoids that.
VehiclePhoto handles this automatically — clean backgrounds, matching angles, privacy masking, and grounded listing copy, built from the photos you already have.
See how it works