Hello, everyone -
So apparently this new square crop is here to stay and it's messing everyone up. I may have found a way to easily adjust images so they won't get stretched. My understanding is that Etsy changed to square photos because people are more likely to click on them - like Instagram. It also probably allows for more listing to show in a row, as well.
I played around in Photoshop, but this should work in Canva as well. I'll try to keep this simple because not everyone is technical.
THIS IS A POTENTIAL HACK - not a tutorial. It's working for me, and I hope it helps you.
Apparently, when the new programming crops down to square it's reading the white space and reads color as the image that should be focused on in the crop. But the image shows as rectangle (landscape) in the listing photos still - because people want to see detail.
So - if you create your Hero/Primary Image as a square, and center it on a colored background, you can control the crop. It will still read square on search results and storefront, but landscape in your listing.
Because I couldn't figure out how to add a photo here, I created a listing. It has several images that show how different layouts will crop. Please don't buy it. Just copy the dimensions from the images.
Etsy Primary Listing Image Crop Hack
Also, there is a new "Preview" button at the bottom of listings now. It's "coming soon" but will hopefully help.
