Adobe Stock editorial: what to know
| What Adobe accepts | Illustrative editorial only: real products, places and events shown to illustrate a story. Adobe Stock does not take news or documentary editorial. |
|---|---|
| Title | Adobe asks for a title that describes the content and includes the date and location. The Adobe Stock CSV uses the dated description as the title. |
| Keywords | Factual keywords. Names of places, events and brands shown in the photo belong in editorial metadata. |
| Commercial files | Keep dates, people's names, brand names and event names out of the titles and keywords of regular stock files: Adobe refuses editorial-style metadata there. |
Agencies update their rules, so confirm against their editorial guidelines before you submit. More on Adobe Stock: Adobe Stock keyword generator · Adobe Stock metadata checker.
What the editorial generator writes
| Field | What you get |
|---|---|
| Title | A neutral, factual title of 6 to 12 words and at most 70 characters: who or what is shown, and where. |
| Description | With the place and date in your note: "City, Country - MONTH DAY, YEAR:" with the month in capitals, then one factual sentence, under 150 characters in all. Without them, only the factual sentence. |
| Keywords | 30 to 49 factual keywords, most important first: what is shown, the place, the event and the actions. Names of places, events and brands visible in the photo are allowed. No opinions. |
The dateline: put the place and date in the note
The AI can see a crowd, a stage and a city square. It can't see that this is the Ljubljana Christmas market on 3 December 2026. Write the place and the date in the note and the description starts with them, in the format Shutterstock uses for documentary editorial.
Example
Without a note: Crowd of people walking between wooden stalls in a decorated city square
Note "Ljubljana, Slovenia, December 3, 2026, Christmas market": Ljubljana, Slovenia - DECEMBER 3, 2026: Visitors walk between wooden stalls at the Christmas market in the city centre.
How it works
- Drop up to 5 photos from the same event. JPEG, PNG or WebP; resized and sent to the AI, not stored.
- Write the note: place, date and event, plus any names you know. It is used for every photo.
- Review. Each description is checked for the dateline, 5 words and 150 characters.
- Download the CSV for your agency: Shutterstock (every row marked editorial), Adobe Stock (the dated description as the title), Alamy (the dated description as the caption), or iStock & Getty through ESP, qHero or DeepMeta (in DeepMeta's editorial format).
Editorial caption generators for other agencies
Editorial or commercial?
Commercial stock photos can be used in advertising, so they need model and property releases and no brand names. Editorial photos can show real events, people and brands without releases, but only for news, documentary and educational use. If your photo is commercial, use the stock photo description generator instead, and check it with the stock rejection checker before you submit.
Frequently asked questions
Does Adobe Stock accept editorial photos?
Only illustrative editorial: photos that show real products, brands or places to illustrate a story. Adobe Stock does not accept news or documentary editorial.
What should an Adobe illustrative editorial title include?
A description of what is shown, with the date and the location. Put both in the note and the generator writes them at the start of the description, which the Adobe Stock CSV uses as the title.
What is an editorial caption?
Editorial photos record real people, places and events, and they are sold for news, documentary and educational use, not for advertising. Their metadata says plainly what happened, where and when. Shutterstock asks for documentary editorial descriptions to start with a dateline: "City, Country - MONTH DAY, YEAR:".
Where do the place and date come from?
From your note. The AI cannot see where or when a photo was taken, so write them in the note, for example "Ljubljana, Slovenia, December 3, 2026, Christmas market". Without both, the description is a factual sentence with no dateline, and the result says so.
Can editorial metadata name brands and people?
Names of places, events and brands that are part of the story are allowed in editorial metadata. Do not guess the names of people: only name someone if you know who they are and the agency accepts it.
Which agencies is it for?
Shutterstock, iStock & Getty Images and Alamy, which all sell editorial photos. You get a CSV for each, and the Shutterstock CSV marks every row as editorial. Adobe Stock only accepts illustrative editorial, not news.
Is it free?
Yes. Without an account you can do 5 photos every 24 hours, the same free photos as the stock description generator.
Captions for a whole event, not one photo at a time
In PhotoTager one note per folder goes into every caption of the shoot. Pay-as-you-go from $0.04 per image, credits never expire.
Start free with $2 of creditsMore free tools: Description generator · Metadata checker · Shutterstock keywords · Alamy tags