Illustrative editorial requirements

Find out what illustrative editorial content is all about, who can submit it, and the technical requirements and steps for doing so. 

At Adobe Stock, we define illustrative editorial as conceptual imagery designed to illustrate articles on current events and newsworthy topics. This type of content often features images of real brands and products — like signs on buildings, soda cans, computers, and cars — to convey a story. Illustrative editorial content is made available to Adobe Stock customers for editorial use only.

Illustrative editorial isn’t the same as editorial content, which documents events or incidents that are currently occurring or developing, or that have already occurred. We do not accept traditional editorial content at this time.

For illustrative editorial, we don’t accept:

• Images that feature recognizable people 
• Images of restricted events such as conventions and sports games
  
• Images that feature tight crops of copyrighted or trademarked material, such as stamps, fine art, or other content that may violate privacy rights
  
• Digitally created or manipulated versions of trademarked logos or other brand content — other than social media icons

Who can submit illustrative editorial?

Contributors with 100 or more downloads in their account history can submit illustrative editorial content. If you’re in this group, you can use the Illustrative Editorial checkbox in the Uploaded Files tab.  

Follow these tech specs and best practices:

• Submit photos, illustrations, and vector images. We don’t accept illustrative editorial videos at this time.
  
• See photo and illustration requirements and vector requirements for file formats and minimum and maximum files sizes. 
  
• Make sure your content is properly exposed and of highest technical quality.
  
• Only post-process or crop if you can do so without changing the context or meaning of the content. 

Follow these steps to submit your content