Uber Eats Food Photography: Files, Angles and Uploads

What Uber Eats actually publishes about photo files

Uber's developer documentation for menu integrations lists the technical limits for menu images: file size under 25 MB, formats JPG, WEBP or PNG, and width and height each between 320 px and 6000 px. Those numbers are the safest starting point because they come from Uber's own documentation rather than from a blog post or a template.

Uber Eats does not publish a single, complete pixel specification covering every menu photo upload path. Pixel rules can differ between the developer integration route and the Menu Maker screen inside Uber Eats Manager, and they can change. Before you shoot or export an entire menu, open the upload screen for one item and read what it asks for, then build your export settings around that.

• File size: under 25 MB
• Formats: JPG, WEBP or PNG
• Width and height: each between 320 px and 6000 px
• Confirm the current requirement on the upload screen before a large batch

How Uber Eats wants the dish shot

Uber Eats' own photo tips are specific enough to build a shoot around. Use indirect natural window light rather than harsh direct sun or fluorescent tubes. Shoot straight down for plates and bowls, and about 45 degrees for burgers, sandwiches and other tall items so you see both the top and the layers.

For stacked items, cut and stack burgers, wraps and burritos so the filling shows. Add garnish for color but keep it a true representation of the dish. Avoid extreme close-ups that hide ingredients and portion size, because the customer is judging what will arrive in the bag.

A workable setup: place a table near a window, turn off overhead fluorescents, and shoot with the window at the side of the dish rather than behind it. Use a plain surface that contrasts with the food, and shoot one item per frame. If you are photographing a soup or a curry, a straight-down angle shows the surface and the garnish; for a tall burger, a 45 degree angle at roughly arm's length keeps the whole stack in frame.

• Window light, indirect, side-on
• Top-down for plates and bowls
• About 45 degrees for burgers, sandwiches and tall items
• Cut and stack to show filling
• Garnish for color, not for illusion
• No extreme close-ups

Crop and framing for small screens

Customers scroll a menu on a phone, so the dish has to read at thumbnail size. Frame with a little breathing room around the plate, then check the image shrunk down to a small preview. If the protein disappears into the sauce at that size, reshoot closer or change the garnish placement rather than cropping harder.

Keep the crop consistent across a category. If every pasta dish is centered with the same amount of table showing, the menu looks deliberate; if one image is a tight close-up and the next is a wide shot of the whole table, the list looks careless. Export a square version for your own channels and a wider version for the menu, and keep the plate inside both.

Shoot a little wider than you plan to publish. That extra margin lets you crop to a square for Instagram, a wide banner for your website and a menu thumbnail from the same file without cutting into the food.

Uploading in Menu Maker and handling review status

Photos are uploaded per item in Menu Maker inside Uber Eats Manager. After upload, each photo shows an in-review or rejected status in the Items tab. Check that tab after every batch rather than assuming a green light.

If a photo comes back rejected, do not resubmit the same file. Read the reason, then look at the most common causes: the image shows more than one dish, the dish is misrepresented, the photo is too dark or blurry to identify, or the file breaks the published limits. Reshoot or re-export from the original file and upload again.

Keep your originals. A rejected export is usually a crop or compression problem, not a failed shoot, so a clean original lets you fix it in minutes rather than booking another session. Name files by item so you can match a rejection to the right dish.

• Upload per item in Menu Maker
• Check the Items tab for in-review or rejected status
• Fix the cause before resubmitting
• Keep original files and name them by item

A shooting plan for a whole menu

Group dishes by how they photograph. Flat items like pizza, bowls and salads work top-down; tall items like burgers, wraps and stacked sandwiches need the 45 degree angle. Shoot all the flat items in one session and all the tall items in another so the light and surface stay consistent.

For each item, shoot three frames: a centered hero, a slightly wider version with margin for cropping, and one detail frame showing texture or filling. That gives you options when a thumbnail crop does not work. Shoot the best sellers first so a partial menu still looks complete if time runs short.

If you are in India, note that Uber sold its Uber Eats India business to Zomato in January 2020, so restaurants there list on Zomato and Swiggy instead. The shooting advice above still applies, but the upload rules you follow are the ones published by the platform you actually list on.

Where an edited photo belongs

Some platforms ban AI-generated or altered images. Where that is the rule, shoot and upload your own real photo to that platform and do not use an edited version there. Uber Eats' own tips ask for a true representation of the dish, so keep edits to light, background and crop rather than changing what is on the plate.

FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop for the restaurant's own channels, keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes. Use those versions on your website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print, and upload your own real photo to the delivery platform.

Checklist before you publish

Run through these steps for each item before you consider the menu finished.

• Shoot near a window with indirect light and the overheads off
• Use top-down for plates and bowls, about 45 degrees for tall items
• Cut and stack burgers and wraps so the filling shows
• Keep garnish honest and skip extreme close-ups
• Export within the published file limits and confirm on the upload screen
• Check the Items tab for in-review or rejected status
• Keep originals named by item for quick fixes