Shutterstock accepts two categories of editorial content:
Documentary Editorial content are images that capture certain event or subject of human interest. These images must accurately and truthfully communicate the event or subject.
Illustrative Editorial content are creative and/or conceptual images that can be used to illustrate newsworthy or current events, as well as subjects of human interest. The arrangement of the subject and/or other visual elements that make up an image must be well thought out and image quality should be superb since this content is shot in a controlled environment. Poorly arranged subjects or images with distracting elements will be rejected. Light traditional photographic post-processing techniques can be used to enhance illustrative editorial content, but no major alterations. (read more about illustrative editorial on our blog)
To be accepted, editorial content must:
meet our editorial image quality requirements,
fall under a documentary or illustrative editorial category,
be accompanied with an editorial caption.
be tagged as an editorial image
1. Quality requirements
Illustrative Editorial images must have a quality that is inline with our commercial quality standards, for Documentary Editorial images the quality standards are more lenient. Commercial images or clips submitted for editorial use to avoid our Model Release, Property Release or Trademark and Copyright requirements will not be accepted.