iStockphoto - Stock Photography Training Manual

1.0 iStockphoto's Standards

Our technical and quality standards are aimed at creating useful images and visual elements that designers can confidently include in their projects. iStock Inspectors apply these standards to every image uploaded here in order to ensure that:

• Our images will reproduce accurately across different digital and print media.
• Our images do not contain any kind of technical imperfections at full size that will limit their usefulness.
• Our images contain no unreleased people or property, copyright or trademark elements, that could limit their commercial application under our standard royalty-free license.

In other words, our priority is providing designers with images that are ready to use for any application or project. All of our standards boil down to meeting this goal.

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Contents

1.0 iStockphoto's Standards

2.0 Account Information

3.0 Image Requirements

4.0 Quality Standards

• What We're Looking For
• Suitability
• Focus
• Lighting
• Isolation & Cropping
• Noise
• Compression
• Overfiltering
• Chromatic Aberration
• Sensor Spots
• Lens Flares
• Image Hygiene
• Borders & Rotation
• Duplicates & Series
• Nudity

5.0 Film Scans

• Film Speed
• Scan Size

6.0 Title, Description & Keywords

• Image Titles
• Descriptions
• Keywords

7.0 Legal Requirements

• Products & Objects
• Logos, Trademarks & Intellectual Property
• Art, Architecture & Performances
• Places, Locations & Venues
• Problematic Subjects & Practices

8.0 Model & Property Releases

• Model Releases
• Property Releases

9.0 Editorial Use Only Images

• What We Accept
• Different Standards & Expectations

10.0 Prohibited Uses

FAQs