The PixTagger Blog
Practical keywording and metadata guides for Getty Images, iStock, and Adobe Stock contributors.
Who Owns the Stock Agencies, and Can They Pay?
Contributors argue about royalty percentages as though they were a pricing choice. The filings suggest they are a symptom. Getty Images trades 97% below its 2022 debut, carries $2.06 billion of debt against a $114 million market value, and disclosed substantial doubt about continuing as a going concern. Shutterstock lost 11% of its subscribers and 12% of its paid downloads in a year and suspended its dividend. Adobe, meanwhile, earns $6.6 billion a quarter. The ownership map, the numbers, and what a contributor should actually do about them.
Read guide →The Getty ESP CSV, Field by Field
The metadata CSV is the least documented part of contributing to Getty and iStock. Every column explained, plus the details that decide whether an import works: why the created date has to be MM/DD/YYYY and has to come from EXIF rather than the file timestamp, which keywords Getty applies itself so you stop wasting slots on them, the byte-order mark that makes ESP find nothing, the trailing newline that eats your last row, and the DeepMeta import behaviour that means you must verify before uploading.
Read guide →Why Stock Photos and Video Get Rejected
A rejection notice gives you two words and no explanation. This is what each reason actually means, from the agencies' own moderation documentation: the published similar-content thresholds (Adobe's three variations, Shutterstock counting a different camera move as a similar, Getty's two-of-three rule), the metadata rules that fail files silently, the technical causes worth treating as a pre-flight checklist, the absolute legal refusals — and the resubmission limit that permanently kills a file on its second rejection.
Read guide →What One Stock Download Actually Pays
A 40% royalty at Shutterstock can pay ten cents. A 33% royalty at Adobe can pay ninety-nine. A 30% royalty at Pond5 applies to a price you set yourself. The real per-download economics across nine agencies — the floors and flat rates that override the percentage entirely, the level ladder that resets every January, Alamy's September 2026 restructure, and the payout thresholds that decide whether the money ever reaches you.
Read guide →Stock Video Specs & Metadata: 9 Agencies Compared
The same 60-second clip is legal at one agency, four seconds too long at another, and too big to upload at a third — and a keyword list that counts as thorough on Pond5 counts as stuffed on Adobe Stock. Every published video spec and metadata rule for nine agencies on one page: containers, codecs, frame rates, duration windows, file-size caps, keyword limits, title rules, filename rules and the exact CSV columns each importer expects.
Read guide →Are Getty Custom Content Briefs Worth It?
Getty pays $50-$100 per selected file at a 25% royalty — and its own numbers imply only 5-8% of submissions sell. The full trade: the licence clause that binds your files even if you leave Getty, the two-of-three similars rule that breaks the obvious double-shoot workaround, the three-month cycle before unsold work reaches your portfolio, and the opportunity cost nobody invoices.
Read guide →The Complete Shutterstock Contributor Guide (2026)
Everything Shutterstock actually requires, from their own contributor documentation: 4 MP and sRGB for stills, the full footage spec (.mov/.mp4, 5–60s, 10 GB, ProRes 422, vertical 4K), the title and keyword rules that cause most rejections, the bulk CSV route, the 15–40% royalty levels that reset every January, and why AI-generated submissions are not accepted.
Read guide →How AI Images Changed Stock Photographer Earnings
What the filings actually show: Getty and Shutterstock posted record 2025 revenue while the generatable half of the catalogue went flat then negative, Adobe Stock's library hit 47.9% AI-generated, and average earnings per file fell without a single royalty rate being cut. With charts, the independent research, and what to do about it.
Read guide →The Complete Adobe Stock Contributor Guide (2026)
How to contribute to Adobe Stock end to end: getting set up, file requirements (JPEG, sRGB, 4MP–100MP, up to 45MB), the 21 categories, releases, labelling AI content, the keywording Adobe's search actually rewards, CSV upload, and the rejection reasons that cost the most.
Read guide →The Complete Getty Images & iStock Contributor Guide (2026)
iStock is owned by Getty Images, so one application covers both. The full contributor workflow: how to apply, prepare files to spec, keyword for the controlled vocabulary, upload through the Contributor app and ESP, and avoid the rejection reasons that cost the most sales.
Read guide →Similar shots, same keywords: why your photos compete
Pasting one keyword set across a burst of near-identical frames risks duplicate-content rejection and makes the survivors cannibalise each other in search. Here's how to give each frame a different true leading keyword — with a real three-frame example — and how PixTagger's varied-context mode automates it.
Read guide →Stock agency metadata formats: CSV columns & keyword limits
A contributor's reference to how Getty, iStock, Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Pond5, Dreamstime, Alamy, Depositphotos and 123RF accept titles, descriptions and keywords — which use a CSV, which read embedded IPTC/XMP, the exact columns, and the keyword limits.
Read guide →Best Stock Photo Sites to Sell On in 2026
Where should you sell stock photos? A contributor-first comparison of Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, iStock, Getty Images and 123RF — reach, royalties, exclusivity, and the keywording difference that decides whether your files sell.
Read guide →How many keywords should stock photos have?
How many keywords to use on Adobe Stock, Getty, iStock and Shutterstock — the limits per platform, why more isn't better, how many for video, and why Getty needs fewer than you think.
Read guide →Getty Images vs iStock: 2026 Royalty Rates
Official contributor royalty rates for Getty Images and iStock in 2026 — exclusive iStock starts at 25% on photos and video, 30% on illustrations — plus payment timing, exclusivity trade-offs, and which brand earns you more.
Read guide →Stock photo vs video: which should you shoot to sell?
Video pays more and faces less competition than stock photos — but it's harder to produce and far harder to keyword. Here's how photo and video really compare for contributors, and why metadata decides it.
Read guide →7 Adobe Stock metadata mistakes that quietly kill your sales
The title and keyword mistakes that keep Adobe Stock buyers from finding your work — and exactly how to fix each one, straight from Adobe's own contributor guidance.
Read guide →Adobe Stock keyword order: why the first keywords decide
On Adobe Stock, keyword order is a ranking signal — the leading keywords carry the most search weight. Here's the order that gets your photos and videos found and sold.
Read guide →How to keyword for Getty Images: controlled vocabulary
What Getty's controlled vocabulary is, why it decides whether your photos get found, and a practical keywording workflow that survives Getty and iStock review.
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