Depop Covers Without Story Stickers: Four Photo Slots, Square Crop

Four slots, one square crop

Depop’s own help centre is specific about counts and vague about pixels. You can add up to four photos and one video, plus a description, hashtags, category, and shipping. The app then shows listing photos in a square frame. Third-party resize blogs argue over 1080 versus 1280; Depop does not publish that number. What you can reproduce is the crop: if you upload a vertical Story still, the sides of the jacket disappear. Compose with the garment inside a 1:1 safe area, or export a square master yourself so the marketplace is not choosing the crop. Video is a fifth asset, muted on upload in Depop’s listing-video notes — it does not replace a clean cover still.

Stickers are a different job from typed prices

The cover that dies in Explore is often a saved Instagram Story: heart packs across the hem, a “NEW DROP” GIF on the collar, a poll chip over the tag. That overlay is graphical. Paint the sticker, not the denim. Typed usernames, “$40 OBO,” and date stamps are lettering — those belong on a text pass after the stickers are gone, not in the same brush stroke. Mixing the two is why a sleeve still shows a yellow blob. Zoom to 100% on fabric. You want the original grain, not a plastic patch where a GIF sat.

Before After

What to put in the other three photos

Depop gives you four stills. Cover is the garment in the square. Slot two is a second angle or the back. Slot three is a label, stain, or seam the buyer will otherwise message you about. Slot four is measurements or a flat-lay. Do not burn a fifth Story into the cover hoping the stickers “add personality.” Buyers report listings when the item arrives without the graphic that was never sewn on. If a sticker covered a hole, stop. Reconstruction cannot invent the hole you needed to disclose.

Files you can actually upload

Cleanup uploads here accept JPG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF up to 10MB and 6000×6000 px. A 1080 px Story still under 2MB usually returns in under 60 seconds. Export a square JPEG for Depop after the overlay is gone. Poshmark heroes are a separate crop; do not stretch a 9:16 still to fill a square. Skip the tool when the only file is a 400 px WhatsApp forward, when stickers cover most of the piece, or when you do not have rights to sell against that photo. If the Story was a live photo or a GIF, upload a still. Live frames will not reconstruct a clean hem. Name files `sku-cover-square.jpg` versus `sku-story-original.jpg` so a dispute folder is not a scavenger hunt.

Daily listing habit

Sellers who post every day keep the original Story in a folder named for the SKU, run one overlay pass, then batch three honest angles in the same sitting. Only edit photos you took or that the owner of the garment cleared. Cleaning your own try-on is shop ops. Lifting another seller’s selfie is not — and the buyer will notice when the jacket arrives without the pin the sticker hid. Hashtags and brand tags on Depop are description fields, not photo overlays. Do not paint a brand hashtag onto the garment after cleanup; that is a different kind of misleading listing.

Poshmark is a second crop, not a second Story

If you cross-list, do not reuse the Depop square as-is on Poshmark without checking the hero. Poshmark still wants the item readable in a feed thumbnail; a sticker remnant becomes a JPEG smear after their compression. Keep one untitled try-on master, then export platform crops. Flaws belong in a dedicated slot, not painted out. Painting out a stain you will ship is the same class of problem as fake staging on a listing photo. Cross-list titles and measurements in the text fields; do not bake a size chart as a sticker on the cover.

When a new mirror shot is cheaper

Motion blur, a dark bathroom, and a sticker over the brand label are not overlay problems. Relight by the window, shoot four frames that already fit a square, then skip cleanup entirely. Credits spent reconstructing a label you could photograph in twenty seconds are wasted. Keep the dated original in case a buyer dispute needs the unedited still.

When the best fit check still has last night’s hype pack across the sleeve, clear the sticker layer, export a square, and fill the other three slots with the garment, not the Story UI. Then read the listing once on a phone before you tap post.