How To Upload To Shutterstock

Information technology is quite easy to start selling your photos on Shutterstock. In fact, the whole procedure might have you only few minutes if you know what to do. Here are the steps:

Register equally a contributor
Add metadata to your photograph
Upload your photo to Shutterstock
Submit your photo for review

This blog post covers photo upload and submission procedure and we presume you are already a contributor on Shutterstock. If not, go to registration page and complete the process. You can bank check Shutterstock registration guide that might assist you with the registration.

Photograph requirements on Shutterstock

Shutterstock has quite specific requirements to what y'all may or may non sell.

Here are some of them with regards to photography:

Yous own full copyright for the photo
Photo is in JPG or TIFF format without layers
Photo dimensions should be of minimum 4MP (megapixels)
File size should non exceed 50MB (megabytes)

Please notation the difference between megabytes (file size) and megapixels (image dimensions), some contributors get easily dislocated past them. To calculate your photo megapixels, you should multiply photo width by height.

Some other important note here is about copyright. All microstocks require that you lot own or command copyright of the content you upload. Yous cannot submit photos made by other people, images from the internet etc. If your photo contains recognizable people, you must besides provide Model Release or Property Release which are legal documents where copyright holders or recognizable people give their consent for submitting your photograph to Shutterstock.

What is metadata

All photos on Shutterstock have Keywords and Description that assist customers to find them using search. Keywords and Description are likewise referred to as Metadata (that is, data about data).

You tin can adhere metadata to photos in 1 of the two ways:

If y'all sell merely on Shutterstock so you tin upload your files first and add together metadata on Shutterstock Correspondent portal.
If you plan to sell on more than i microstock website (due east.g. Adobe Stock or Depositphotos) then it volition exist better to add together metadata before upload.

Unremarkably second choice is preferable considering you own everything: photograph and metadata. If you own photo, but metadata is only on Shutterstock, it may create you impediments in future if you will want to employ other microstocks as well.

Calculation metadata to photos in Xpiks

Open Xpiks and add your photos there. The easiest is to drag'n'drop them into Xpiks.

Add photos to Xpiks

At present you need to enter Description, Title and Keywords to each photo. It is easier to do it if yous open each photo separately: just double click on the thumbnail. Xpiks tin assist you with keywords by providing Keywords Suggestions. Shutterstock does non require Title metadata, but you may add it now since other microstocks similar Adobe Stock need it.

Add metadata

After you are done with editing metadata, select all files and save them. Saving attaches Description and Keywords that you just entered to the bodily file on your disk. Afterward it is attached to the file, Shutterstock will exist able to read information technology afterwards you upload the file.

Upload photos to Shutterstock

There are 2 ways to upload your photos:

browser upload, suitable for minor amount of files being uploaded
upload via FTP, suitable for many files or simultaneous upload to many websites

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is one of the ways of communication over the internet (e.g. just similar you lot employ HTTP protocol via your browser to read this page). Software that tin can speak FTP is unremarkably called "FTP client". Some examples are FileZilla and Cyberduck.

Luckily you can upload photos right from Xpiks, considering Xpiks is likewise an FTP client. Just select the files and click "Upload".

Configure Shutterstock

Here y'all demand to enter your username and password that you lot use to login to the website. So printing "Test connectedness" button: if y'all configured everything correctly, it will turn green. After y'all are gear up, press "Outset upload".

Configure Shutterstock

Submit for review

Later upload finishes y'all can head over to Shutterstock Contributor Portal (you tin can select in card "Portfolio -> Submit content") and see your files there.

Submit section

Every bit you lot might have noted, the files contain Description and Keywords that yous have previously entered in Xpiks. Now you demand to select a category for the photo. In this case the most appropriate volition exist just "Nature".

Select category

After you are done, press "Submit" button. Your files volition be added to the review queue and yous will receive an email when your photos volition get reviewed by Shutterstock inspectors. If your photos will be accepted, they go bachelor for customers to buy immediately. Otherwise you volition receive a rejection reason in the response and you volition have a chance to prepare the mistakes and resubmit.