Resources & Guides

Writing stock titles

A stock title is a caption, not a slogan. Lead with the subject and the action, then add the useful context — setting, mood, or the concept a buyer would search for. Keep the strongest words at the front, use natural language rather than a comma-stuffed list, and avoid hype terms like best or amazing, which add nothing a buyer can search.

The generator enforces a hard cap of 70 characters per title, so a title that reads cleanly at 60 and still carries the subject is the target. If a title comes back generic, it is usually because the image itself is ambiguous; regenerate it with a vision-capable model or edit the wording directly. For marketplace-specific examples, see the templates and formulas page.

Keyword research and pruning

Keywords are how a buyer finds the image after a search. The generator returns between 20 and 49 keywords per image, ordered by relevance, with 20 to 40 treated as the practical range. The list is built from what is visible, then cleaned: singular and plural duplicates are merged, banned words are removed, and each field is capped to the length limit you set.

• Keep the top ten keywords tightly tied to the main subject — that is where most searches land.
• Add concept keywords for the buyer's use case, not just the literal objects in frame.
• Drop near-duplicates; three spellings of the same noun do not add reach.
• Prune anything the image cannot support. A wrong keyword is worse than a missing one.

The stock keyword generator page covers the scoring and ordering rules in more detail.

Adobe Stock CSV guide

The Adobe Stock export uses five columns, in this order: Filename,Title,Keywords,Category,Releases. The downloaded file is named Adobe_Stock_CSV_<DD-MM-YYYY>.csv, and one export can hold up to 2,000 rows. Keywords are written as a list, and the category and release fields follow the marketplace's conventions.

Generate the batch, review the titles and keyword lists inline, fix anything weak, then export once. The Adobe Stock metadata generator guide walks through the marketplace-specific expectations.

Shutterstock CSV guide

The Shutterstock export uses seven columns: Filename,Description,Keywords,Categories,Editorial,Mature Content,Illustration. The file is named Shutterstock_CSV_<DD-MM-YYYY>.csv and caps at 2,000 rows. The three flags are Yes or No, and the category column uses the canonical names below.

At least one valid category is required per row. If a row has none, the export stops, returns an error that names the offending files, and produces no CSV, so a marketplace never receives a file it will reject. The client also warns — without blocking the export — when a row has fewer than 20 keywords, or when Editorial is set to Yes, because Editorial assets need a capture date and location in the description.

See the Shutterstock metadata generator guide for the full flow.

Category taxonomy

Shutterstock categories are auto-classified from the image by a dedicated vision call and stay editable. There are exactly 26 canonical names:

• Abstract, Animals/Wildlife, Arts
• Backgrounds/Textures, Beauty/Fashion, Buildings/Landmarks
• Business/Finance, Celebrities, Education
• Food and Drink, Healthcare/Medical, Holidays
• Industrial, Interiors, Miscellaneous
• Nature, Objects, Parks/Outdoor
• People, Religion, Science
• Signs/Symbols, Sports/Recreation, Technology
• Transportation, Vintage

Pick the closest single category, or add a second when the image genuinely spans two. Validating a category is the one step that can block an export, so it is worth a quick scan before download.

BYOK setup

Metadata Studio is bring-your-own-key. You add a key for one of the supported providers — Gemini (the default), OpenRouter or Groq — and it is stored only in this browser's localStorage. Each request forwards the key through a stateless relay; it is never stored on the server and never written to logs.

You can add more than one key per provider, and the batch rotates through them, cooling a key down after quota or transient errors. Use the refresh control to discover the live model list for your key; vision-capable models are labelled. For a full walkthrough, read how it works.

Common errors

Most failures fall into a few predictable buckets, and each is reported per item so one bad file does not sink a batch.

• Invalid key — the key is marked Invalid and no longer used. Check the key and re-add it.
• Quota, transient or timeout — retryable; the key cools down and the queue retries other items. Use retry failed once the provider recovers.
• Text-only — a model rejected the image, so the item retried from the filename. Regenerate it with a vision-capable model.
• Missing category on export — the Shutterstock export returns HTTP 400 and names the rows that need a category.

Still stuck? The FAQ answers the most common questions, and the tools overview shows what each part of the app does.