10 steps to getting your images accepted by Stock Agencies in 2024
This article is intended for individuals who wish to make money from their existing photos but encounter challenges in getting their images approved by stock agencies like Shutterstock due to reasons such as issues with focus, exposure, noise, and image titles.
Stock photography offers a profitable avenue for monetizing your existing photos while providing a chance to showcase your work and boost your online visibility.
Beginning in 2020 during the global lockdown, my spare-time efforts of uploading to Stock agencies has led to a strong online presence with 1000's of images published in all types of publications.
My strategy to quick gains in sales and making money from my existing images after a lot of trials, failures and disappointments, was as follows;
Organising and Cataloguing images
Create a Catalogue with ISO 100 images
Fix Noise and Sharpness
Lens corrections
Straighten images
Make Tonal adjustments
Create a Caption
Create a title
Keyword each image
Upload to various stock agencies
1 - Organising and Cataloguing images into Lightroom
I want to emphasise that I have no sponsorship or financial ties to Adobe. However, I genuinely believe that Lightroom is an excellent tool for organising images with various attributes and metadata. It offers a comprehensive solution, covering the entire process from import, library creation, image development, to export in a suitable file format.
While there are alternative options available, I consistently find myself returning to Lightroom for its effectiveness.
2 - Find and catalogue existing images with the lowest ISO
Customers and stock agencies demand crisp, noise-free images. If an image is sharp but contains digital noise, it will face rejection from all agencies who actively avoid including such images in their portfolios because they occupy space but rarely generate downloads. Consequently, as a best practice, it is advisable to initiate your workflow with images captured at the camera's lowest ISO setting.
In the example below, there are 270 images filtered within a specific ISO range, resulting in the selection of only 92 images, all of which are set at ISO 100.
It's crucial to adopt a mindset that allows you to remove emotion and exercise discipline when it comes to excluding images beyond salvage. These images not only face rejection but also consume significant time in Lightroom and Photoshop, potentially leading to negative feelings. Therefore, it's advisable to store these images in an archive on your hard drive. When you're more established, you can revisit them and invest time in their improvement.
3 - Fix noise and sharpness - Bring out the detail in the images
Considering that noise and sharpness are the main priorities, this should be the initial step in any workflow.
A valuable suggestion is to examine each image at a 100% zoom level to assess sharpness and focus. Occasionally, lenses may lack proper calibration and could exhibit either back or front focus, leading to issues with subject focus.
When viewing an image at 100% and it appears significantly out of focus, assign it a 1-star rating.
If an image is nearly in focus but has a minor focus issue, mark it with a 3-star rating and consider revisiting it later.
Images that exhibit excellent focus, sharpness, and have had noise corrected in Lightroom should receive a 4-star rating, as these are the only images worth investing time in for potential uploads at this stage.
Even images that appear to be free of noise and in focus can still benefit from additional noise reduction and sharpening.
An illustration of sharpening and noise reduction in Lightroom is demonstrated below.
It's crucial to keep in mind that decreasing noise will simultaneously reduce sharpness, and conversely, boosting sharpness will amplify noise.
In summary, achieving an optimal balance between sharpness and noise is essential.
Images that meet these technical standards – being sharp with no noise, properly aligned and straight – tend to sell frequently and enjoy high usage.
4 - Lens corrections (get rid of the purple fringing I.E Chromatic Aberrations)
Images will face rejection if they exhibit Chromatic Aberrations, which are the purple fringing lines frequently observed in photos with intense highlights set against a dark subject.
In Lightroom's developer module, there's a feature known as "Lens corrections" that effectively eliminates any fringing.
This feature also enables you to specify the lens's make and model, automatically rectifying any distortions introduced by the lens. I strongly recommend applying this to every image.
5 - Straighten images - transform your image with perspective corrections
While your images won't necessarily face rejection due to tilting or converging elements, it's important to note that these factors can significantly diminish their appeal to potential customers. Aesthetic and compositional considerations play a crucial role in capturing the viewer's attention and making your images more attractive in the competitive world of stock photography.
Hence, it's of utmost importance to verify that each image is well-aligned and devoid of any inclination or tilt to either side.
Lightroom provides an excellent tool for addressing this issue, known as 'Transform,' accessible within the Developer Module.
6 - Do any tonal adjustments - Highlights, Shadows, Clarity, Saturation etc.
Typically, it's considered a sound practice to maintain highlights and shadows within the bounds of the histogram, which leads to a more comprehensive tonal image where both highlights and shadows preserve their full information.
Nonetheless, there are situations where the background must be entirely white or black, and in such cases, your image editing should be guided by a clear understanding of your target audience's preferences and needs.
When uploading an image that a potential customer might want to print, it's crucial to avoid overexposing the highlights completely. This can pose a challenge because printers won't apply ink to the white areas, and depending on the paper type and lighting conditions, this oversight can become visibly apparent.
7 - Create a Caption / Description
If most of the images you're uploading feature identifiable individuals, artists, or properties, it may be more practical to categorize them as editorial images rather than investing significant time in obtaining model releases or removing business logos to make them suitable for commercial use.
Crafting a well-constructed caption is essential because it simplifies the task for editors, enabling them to swiftly identify pertinent images.
The best suggested format is, Where, When, What and Who?
An example will be as follows;
Caption / Description : Slough, Berkshire, UK, JULY 2020 - Big Blue sign outside hospital indicating Covid-19 Testing Area against blurry background.
It's very important to be as accurate as possible with descriptions.
In the instance mentioned earlier, most of the image appears blurry. If the words 'against blurry background' had not been incorporated into the caption or description, there would have been a significant likelihood of the image being rejected due to the reason of 'the primary subject being out of focus.'
When using Shutterstock, contributors have a 200-character limit for entering descriptions. However, it's recommended to input this information in the caption field within Adobe Lightroom. This approach allows you to export images with all the necessary information self-contained, simplifying the process of uploading to any stock agency. There's no need to reenter a caption, streamlining your workflow and ensuring that essential details accompany your images seamlessly.
8 - Create a title
While not all stock agencies demand titles for your images, it's essential to note that those that do will not allow uploads without them. To simplify this process, you can employ a swift and straightforward approach. Copy the description from your caption, omitting the location and date details, and then paste this text into the Title field within Lightroom.
This practice not only ensures compliance with agencies requiring titles but also maintains consistency and efficiency in your image management workflow. It streamlines the procedure of adding titles, allowing you to leverage the existing descriptive information from your captions while making the necessary adjustments for title-specific requirements.
9 - Keyword each image
Effective keywords are arguably the most critical factor in achieving frequent sales and reaping the maximum benefits. These keywords should precisely depict the different aspects of an image, facilitating the customer's ease in locating your content. When employing keywords to describe your image, it's essential to adopt the perspective of a potential buyer. Thinking from their standpoint enables you to choose keywords that align with their search intent and increase the discoverability and appeal of your images.
What will they be looking for?
What will make your image an attractive proposal?
Here is an example of how to Caption and Keyword
Description/Caption - close up of a flatbread Vegan Sandwich held in a woman's hand with dark finger nails and a bite taken out of the sandwich
Keywords ; appetizer, bite, black, blur, bread, break, breakfast, cheese, cooking, cost of living, delicious, dinner, dinning, eat, expensive, feeding, finger, fingers, flat, food, fresh, google, green, half, healthy, herbivore, homemade, hungry, italian, lanyard, locket, lunch, meal, mediterranean, nails, nutrition, pixel, plate, red, restaurant, rings, rocket, rustic, salad, sandwich, sandwiches, time, tomato, varnish, vegan, vegetarian, woman
It is very important to emphasise what the main subject is. So here it's the bread, then Vegan, then its a sandwich in a woman's hand with dark finger nails and finally the bite.
Keywords don't solely revolve around the subject matter; they also encompass context and the potential scenarios in which the subject can be relevant. For instance, a buyer might be seeking images for articles on Mediterranean vacations, scenes of office workers during lunch breaks, or even topics like nails or the cost of living. It's crucial to have the ability to position your image within a specific context or situation to enhance its versatility and appeal to a broader range of potential buyers.
A valuable practice is consistently applying keywords within applications like Lightroom. Typically, professionals advise a minimum of 50 keywords per image. The advantage of this approach becomes apparent as your image catalog grows; the keywords are stored within the app and can be reused for multiple images. Additionally, you can organize keywords into sets of nine, simplifying the process of selecting appropriate keywords, especially since many keywords tend to recur over time.
10 - Upload to various stock agencies
Uploading your images to multiple stock agencies offers several advantages:
Embracing multiple stock agencies provides you with a strategic advantage. It widens your reach, optimizes your income potential, and helps you adapt to industry shifts while offering flexibility in managing exclusive and non-exclusive content. Moreover, it safeguards against the potential pitfalls of changes within individual agencies, promoting a more stable and resilient photography business.
Overall, uploading your images to multiple stock agencies can be a strategic approach to maximise your earnings and reach a wider audience while safeguarding against potential market changes and risks.
If you follow these principles, you will find that the rejection rate will be very minimal and you will be successful at selling your images.
