Depositphotos is a long-running stock agency that accepts photos, vectors, videos, and audio from contributors worldwide. This guide covers the official requirements (account setup, file specs, levels, royalties) together with a set of findings from controlled testing that reveal how the platform processes your filenames, keywords, and descriptions on upload. Several of these behaviors are undocumented and can quietly damage your metadata if you are not aware of them.
Getting Started as a Contributor
- Register a contributor account for free, with no obligations.
- Pass a brief examination test by uploading a few of your best files.
- Once you pass, you can upload files to the site.
Every file is reviewed by Depositphotos inspectors. After it passes inspection, it goes live and becomes available for sale.
File Requirements
Images
- Format: JPEG/JPG/PNG with an RGB color space.
- Minimum resolution: 3.8 MP (2400 x 1600 pixels).
- Maximum file size: 50 MB.
- AI-generated files are not accepted, due to potential intellectual property issues.
If you work with AI-generated images, Depositphotos is not a suitable destination for them.
Vectors
- Supported formats: AI and EPS.
- Must be submitted as a ZIP archive with a JPEG/JPG/PNG preview.
- Preview minimum resolution: 3.8 MP (2400 x 1600 pixels).
- Maximum ZIP size: 50 MB.
Videos
- Accepted formats: ASF, AVI, DV, FLV, MOV, MPEG/MPG, WMV.
- Accepted codecs: Photo JPEG, Motion JPEG-A/B, DV, HDV, DVCPro, H.264/AVC, DivX, Xvid, SVQ1, MP42, MP43, MPG4, MP4V, M4S2, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV2, WMV3, FLV.
- Accepted frame rates: 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.93, or 60 FPS.
- Minimum resolution: 0.07 MP (320 x 240 pixels). Maximum resolution: not limited.
- Length: 3 to 60 seconds.
- Audio is accepted only if it is part of the scene (ambient sounds, voices). The video must not contain any audio track you do not own.
- Maximum file size: 4096 MB.
Audio / Music
- Accepted formats: WAV, MP3, AIF/AIFF.
- Bit depth: 16 or 24 bit.
- Sample rate: 44.1 or 48 kHz.
- Maximum duration: 10 minutes.
- Maximum file size: 1 GB.
Contributor Levels and Royalties
Your level is based on the total number of downloads of your files. Higher levels mean higher royalties.
| Level | Name | Downloads |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Green | up to 499 |
| 2 | Bronze | 500 – 4,999 |
| 3 | Silver | 5,000 – 24,999 |
| 4 | Gold | 25,000 – 149,999 |
| 5 | Platinum | 150,000+ |
How downloads are counted: a Pack download counts as 1. A subscription download counts as one-third, so 3 subscription downloads equal 1 download toward your level.
Royalties for photos and vectors
Packs (Standard or Extended License):
| Green | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30% | 32% | 34% | 36% | 38% |
Subscription Plans (fixed, in $):
| Green | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25 | 0.27 | 0.29 | 0.31 | 0.33 |
Royalties for videos
Packs and Video Subscription Plans:
| Green | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30% | 32% | 34% | 36% | 38% |
Royalties for audio
Packs:
| Green | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 34% | 36% | 38% | 40% | 42% |
Revenue Share Special Program
Participants share 40% of net subscription revenue, prorated by the proportion of their files in subscribers’ downloads, with higher earnings at higher levels. These royalties are paid in aggregate at month end.
Royalty notes
- Royalties are based on the actual amount paid by the buyer, including discounts, not the file’s “standard” value.
- If Depositphotos pays taxes to third parties (for example an Apple In-App Purchase), royalties are calculated from what Depositphotos receives after taxes.
- Files sold through partners may have non-standard royalty rates.
Uploading Files
Web upload
The web uploader lets you add files and edit metadata (description, keywords, editorial/nudity flags, releases) directly in the interface.
FTP upload
Depositphotos also provides FTP access:
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| FTP Address | ftp.depositphotos.com |
| Username | your contributor username |
| Password | your contributor password |
Important points based on testing:
- The FTP credentials are the same as your website login.
- The connection is plain FTP, not FTPS or SFTP. Credentials travel unencrypted, and since they are your account login, anyone intercepting them gains full account access. Avoid FTP uploads over public or untrusted networks, and consider a VPN.
- FTP transfers the files only. After upload, files appear in the web interface marked as “unfinished” after some delay. You then have to open each one in the interface, add metadata, and submit it for review. FTP does not complete the submission by itself.
Uploading Metadata via CSV
Instead of typing metadata file by file, you can upload a CSV with descriptions and keywords for your images, vectors, and videos. This is the fastest way to add metadata in bulk.
Column names
Columns in the CSV must be named exactly as follows:
- Filename – file name of your item. The file name in the CSV must match the actual item’s file name exactly.
- Description – item description.
- Keywords – item keywords (up to 50), separated with commas.
- Editorial – whether the item is editorial (boolean, see note below).
- Nudity – whether the item contains nudity (boolean, see note below).
- Releases – comma-separated model release names. Names must match exactly with the names in the Release Manager. If several releases share the same name, the last one is used.
- Audiotype – audio only. Possible values:
sound_effect,soundeffect,effect,sfxfor sound effects, andmusicfor music. - Genre – audio only. Music genre for music, SFX type for sound effects.
- Instrument – music only.
- Mood – music only.
For photo, vector, and video contributors, only these columns are relevant:
Filename, Description, Keywords, Editorial, Nudity, ReleasesAllowed values for audio columns
If you also upload audio, these are the accepted values.
Genre (music): alternative-and-punk, ambient, kids, cinematic, classical, country-and-folk, dance-and-electronic, hip-hop-and-rap, holiday, jazz-and-blues, pop, r-and-b-and-soul, reggae, rock, other, latin, world, rock-and-roll, metal, acoustic, funk, lounge, military, a-capella, religious, corporate.
Genre (sound effects): ambience, animal, cartoon, crowd, emergency, horror, household, human, voices, impact, office, sci-fi, sport, transportation, water, weather, other, construction, destruction, industrial, warfare, transition, food-and-drinks, nature, noise, fantasy, video-game, interface, musical-instrument, technology, signals, holiday, fire, emotions, urban.
Instrument (music): brass, bass, drums, electric guitar, guitar, keyboard, strings, synth, winds, other.
Mood (music): angry, bright, calm, dark, dramatic, funky, happy, inspirational, romantic, sad, other, relaxing, aggressive, emotional, fantasy, festive, epic, cool, melancholic, energetic, intense, anxious.
Boolean values
For Editorial and Nudity:
- Positive:
yes,y,1,true - Negative:
no,n,0,false, or an empty string
CSV rules
- The file must be in UTF-8 encoding.
- Field names are case-insensitive.
- No single field is mandatory, but the file must contain
Filenameplus at least one other field. - Fields do not need to be in a strict order.
- Field values must be in English only: letters, digits, and spaces.
- Field values are trimmed (leading and trailing spaces are removed).
- A valid sample CSV can be downloaded directly from the upload tool.
Format settings to specify before upload
Before uploading the CSV, you must set three options:
- Delimiter (separates fields): comma
,or semicolon; - Enclosure (wraps fields when needed): double quotes
"or single quote' - Symbol escape (escapes control symbols inside fields): backslash
\or double quotes"
A standard, safe row looks like this:
Filename,Description,Keywords,Editorial,Nudity,Releases
example.jpg,"Business team in a modern office","business, team, office, meeting, corporate",false,false,""Two things to keep in mind, connecting this to the rest of the guide: the CSV requires values in English with letters, digits, and spaces, which is consistent with how descriptions are sanitized later. And the keyword spell check (described below) still runs at save time even for keywords imported from CSV, so review your files after import.
Understanding Unicode Normalization (NFC vs NFD)
Before the filename and description sections, this concept needs explaining, because it is the single most surprising behavior on the platform.
An accented character like è can be stored in two different ways that look identical on screen:
- NFC (precomposed): a single code point representing the whole accented letter.
- NFD (decomposed): the base letter plus a separate combining accent mark.
You cannot tell them apart visually, but Depositphotos treats them very differently. What matters for you is that the form usually depends on your operating system and browser:
- Windows: keyboard input and filenames are typically NFC.
- macOS: filenames are typically NFD (the HFS+ heritage decomposes accents; APFS preserves whatever it is given).
- Browsers: most browsers preserve the original normalization of whatever you type or of the filenames you select. Safari is the notable exception, as it tends to normalize text to NFC.
These are general, commonly reported behaviors rather than guarantees for every version and configuration. The practical lesson is that the exact same accented filename or text can reach Depositphotos in NFC or NFD depending on your machine and browser, and the result will differ. If you want certainty, transliterate to plain ASCII before uploading.
How Depositphotos Processes Your Filenames
Depositphotos sanitizes filenames on upload. The rules below were verified using filenames with known encoding (typed by hand on Windows for NFC, and generated via normalize("NFD") for NFD).
Characters that are preserved
The following were all kept unchanged:
A-Z a-z 0-9 space - _ . , ; ' & # @ % + = ~ ( ) [ ] { } ! $A filename like 1 - & # @ % + = ~ ( ) [ ] { } ! $.jpg came through completely intact. The apostrophe that survives is the straight ASCII apostrophe '.
Accented characters
The same accented word produces two completely different results depending on normalization:
| Input filename | Encoding | Result |
|---|---|---|
caffèéìùàò.jpg (typed on Windows keyboard) | NFC | caff.jpg |
caffèéìùàò.jpg (via normalize("NFD")) | NFD | caffeeiuao.jpg |
- NFC: the entire accented character is removed, including the base letter. You lose letters.
- NFD: only the accent mark is removed, and the base letter survives.
The danger is that the most common real-world scenario, a Windows user typing an accented filename by hand, falls into the destructive NFC case and produces mutilated names like caff.jpg.
Non-Latin scripts
Non-Latin characters (Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese, and so on) are stripped. A filename made entirely of non-Latin characters can collapse to just its separators, which is unusable and may collide with other files.
Recommendation for filenames
Do not rely on the automatic cleanup. Transliterate to plain ASCII before uploading:
caffè -> caffe
città -> citta
perché -> perche
東京 -> tokyo
Москва -> moskvaThe safest rule: use only A-Z, a-z, 0-9, hyphen, and underscore in filenames.
How Depositphotos Processes Your Descriptions
Descriptions were tested with controlled input. Verified behavior:
- The field accepts up to 250 characters.
- Straight ASCII characters are preserved, including the straight apostrophe, straight double and single quotes, hyphen,
%,@, and period. A description such asRome's historic center, "thank you", 'single quote', high-quality cable, long-dash test, 50% off, [email protected]was stored intact. - Accented characters behave exactly like filenames:
- NFC: the whole character is removed.
caffèéìùàòbecomescaff. - NFD: the accent is stripped and the base letter is kept.
caffèéìùàòbecomescaffeeiuao.
Since most setups produce NFC (and Safari forces NFC), an accented description typed by hand usually loses entire letters. Write descriptions in plain ASCII and transliterate accented words.
How Depositphotos Processes Your Keywords
Keyword handling has three distinct behaviors that surprised testing, and one of them only appears at save time.
Special characters are preserved
Straight ASCII symbols are kept inside keywords. The following were all accepted:
"thank you" 'single quote' high-quality cable
long-dash test 50% off [email protected]So apostrophes, quotes, hyphens, %, @, and . survive in keywords.
Accents are preserved, which creates invisible duplicates
Unlike filenames and descriptions, keywords keep accented characters intact in both NFC and NFD forms. caffè stays caffè.
The catch: because NFC and NFD differ at the byte level, two visually identical keywords are stored as two separate keywords. You can end up with what looks like a duplicate (caffè and caffè) counted twice, wasting keyword slots and creating duplicates you cannot tell apart on screen.
Spell check runs at save time, not while typing
This is the key finding, and it corrects a natural first impression. When you type keywords, even nonsense ones appear to be accepted. The validation only runs when you save the file. At that point, invalid keywords turn red, with the tooltip “Keyword failed spell check”.
Keywords that fail the spell check are not counted toward the minimum of 8 keywords required to submit. With a file full of red keywords, submitting produced the error “please enter at least 8 unique keywords.”
Observed behavior:
- Real, correctly spelled words pass.
- Nonsense strings such as
asdasdsad asdsadg asdfgand alphanumeric junk likeAk96534fail. - The check is not strict: borderline non-words such as
bla blacan still pass, so the boundary is not fully predictable. - Possessive forms also fail. Both possessive-plus-noun phrases (
dog's house,nature's beauty,company's logo) and bare possessives (Venice's,Rome's) turn red. This most likely fails the same spell check, which provides a single explanation for every red-keyword case.
Recommendation for keywords
- A minimum of 8 valid keywords is required to submit.
- Red (failed) keywords do not count toward that minimum.
- Always save the file and review which keywords turned red before trusting your count. Behavior seen only while typing is unreliable.
- Use real, correctly spelled English words.
- Avoid invented terms, codes, possessives, and accented characters (the last to prevent phantom NFC/NFD duplicates).
bird's nest -> bird, nest
nature's beauty -> nature, beauty
caffè -> cafeSummary of the Three Different Sanitization Rules
| Behavior | Filename | Description | Keyword |
|---|---|---|---|
| NFC accents | character removed (caff) | character removed (caff) | kept, with accent (caffè) |
| NFD accents | accent removed, base kept (caffeeiuao) | accent removed, base kept (caffeeiuao) | kept, with accent (caffè) |
| Non-Latin scripts | removed | not verified, treat as risky | not verified, treat as risky |
ASCII symbols (& # @ % + =) | kept | partly kept (straight quotes/apostrophe/hyphen/%/@/. confirmed) | kept |
| Invalid / nonsense terms | n/a | n/a | fail spell check at save, not counted |
| Possessive forms | n/a | n/a | fail spell check, not counted |
Best Practices Checklist
- Upload only your own work; do not submit AI-generated images.
- Meet the minimum resolution (3.8 MP for images and vector previews).
- Package vectors as a ZIP with a high-resolution preview.
- Keep videos between 3 and 60 seconds at an accepted frame rate.
- Use plain ASCII filenames only (
A-Z,a-z,0-9, hyphen, underscore). - Transliterate accented and non-Latin filenames before uploading; do not trust the cleanup, which deletes letters in the common NFC case.
- Write descriptions in plain ASCII, within 250 characters.
- If using CSV, save it as UTF-8, name the columns exactly, keep values in English (letters, digits, spaces), and set the delimiter, enclosure, and escape options to match your file.
- Provide at least 8 valid keywords, and remember that red (failed) keywords are not counted.
- Always save and review which keywords turned red before relying on your keyword count.
- Avoid invented terms, codes, possessives, and accented characters in keywords.
- After FTP uploads, finish the files in the web interface, where they appear as “unfinished” until you add metadata and submit.
- Prefer the web uploader, or use a VPN with FTP, since Depositphotos uses plain unencrypted FTP with your account credentials.
Conclusion
Depositphotos is a solid platform, but it transforms your metadata in ways that are not documented and that differ across the three fields. The standout issues are the NFC vs NFD accent behavior, which depends on your operating system and browser and can silently delete letters from filenames and descriptions, and the keyword spell check that only runs at save time and quietly drops invalid keywords from your count. The reliable strategy is to clean everything to plain ASCII before uploading, avoid possessives and invented keywords, save and review before submitting, and verify what actually gets stored rather than assuming it matches what you typed.
If you generate metadata with a tool like Photokeyworder.ai, the cleanest approach is to transliterate and sanitize to plain ASCII at export time, so what you upload is exactly what Depositphotos keeps.
