Depositphotos allows up to 50 keywords on an image but tells contributors in its own guidance to stay at 25 to 30, on the grounds that a tighter set ranks better for the terms that matter. It also warns that phrases entered as keywords may be split into separate elements by its system, which means the way you write a keyword matters as much as which keyword you choose.
The 50 that is really 30
The gap between the limit and the recommendation is the most useful thing in the platform's keywording guidance, because it tells you what the search index is optimising for. Fifty slots exist so that genuinely complex images can be described fully. The recommendation to use 25 to 30 exists because relevance is a ratio, not a total: a file described by thirty accurate words looks more specific to a ranking system than the same file described by thirty accurate words and twenty hopeful ones.
This is worth internalising because the instinct on every platform with a high cap is to fill it. Contributors who have come from agencies that reward volume often arrive here and treat 50 as a target. The platform is telling you, in writing, that it is not.
In practice a simple studio image on a plain background rarely needs more than 20 honest terms. A busy scene with several people, a recognisable setting, visible activity and a clear concept can justify 35 or more. Let the image decide, and stop when the next word you would add is one you are arguing yourself into.
Single words, because the system splits phrases
Depositphotos states that a phrase or collocation may be divided into separate elements by the system, and its keywording guidance gives a concrete example of what not to do: entering "woman sitting by the table" as a keyword. That sentence contains one useful term, possibly two, wrapped in grammar the index has to throw away.
The version the platform illustrates as correct is a run of single descriptive words — blogger, businesswoman, casual, coffee — each of which is a term a buyer might actually type on its own. Written that way, every keyword is doing independent work, and the ones that fail to match a search cost you nothing.
The sensible exception is a compound that functions as a single concept in ordinary language: high visibility vest, remote work, social media. Splitting those into their parts produces terms that mean something different from the whole. Beyond that small set, one word per slot is the safe default on this platform.
If you keyword for several agencies from one master set, this is one of the places where the platforms genuinely diverge, and it is worth reading the general treatment of how to structure tagged keywords properly alongside this page.
What the platform tells you to describe
The guidance asks contributors to describe all the things present in the photograph, and it singles out a few layers that inexperienced submitters routinely skip. Subject characteristics come first, including age and the angle of depiction. Location comes next, and here the platform is flexible about specificity — a named city where that is accurate, or a general description such as "studio" where it is not. Shot angles and perspectives are named explicitly as worth including.
That last item deserves attention because it maps onto how buyers narrow results. The platform's search lets people filter by orientation, by exact dimensions, by colour, by number of people on a slider from one to four or more, by gender, age and ethnicity, by indoor or outdoor setting, by isolated versus contextual background, and by editorial versus commercial licence, across thirty or more categories. Every one of those is an attribute someone might also type as a word.
You do not need to keyword every filter value — the filters work from structured data, not from your text. But where an attribute is genuinely distinctive about your image, naming it in words costs one slot and catches the buyers who type rather than click.
Check a title and keyword set against these rules
Paste a title and a keyword list to see it measured against the rules on this page: a working target of 25 to 30 keywords under a 50 ceiling, single descriptive words rather than phrases, no duplicates and no atmospheric filler.
The three things to leave out
Duplicates are named first in the platform's guidance, and they are easier to create than contributors expect. Singular and plural forms, a word and its close synonym, the same term in the title and again as a keyword when the index already reads the title — each of these burns a slot for no additional reach.
Descriptive phrases are second, for the reason covered above. Third, and most often overlooked, are what the guidance calls irrelevant descriptive statements. The example it gives is "sun is shining, music is playing" — atmosphere written as if it were searchable. Nobody licenses an image by typing that. If a term describes the mood of the scene rather than something a buyer would search for, it belongs in the description, not the keyword field.
The platform's separate contributor advice adds two more: avoid foreign words or phrases describing the image, and avoid filler such as "Place your text here". The second one usually arrives by accident, copied out of a template into a description field and never removed.
Titles and descriptions have to match the image
The platform's stated rules for the text fields are short and not numeric: an image title must describe the subject of the image, and the description must correspond with its content. No character counts are published in that guidance, which makes the requirement a matter of accuracy rather than length. The wider set of field-level requirements is covered in the Depositphotos metadata requirements.
There is a second reason to write the title as a plain, literal sentence rather than a keyword string. The platform observes in its own keywording guidance that many clients come to stock platforms from Google search. Your title is therefore competing in a general web index as well as an internal one, and general web search rewards readable phrasing that matches how people actually ask for things.
Where keywording sits in the submission flow
New contributors are examined before they upload in volume: the platform asks for five of your best samples and describes the review as taking seven to ten business days. Its guidance is explicit that you do not need to fill in tags and descriptions at that stage — the metadata work begins once you are through, when you return to your account to complete descriptions and keywords for the files you submit.
It is also worth knowing the file side, because a rejection there makes the keywording moot. Photographs are accepted as JPEG in RGB, at a minimum of 3.8 megapixels — the platform gives 2400 by 1600 pixels as the reference — and up to 50 MB. Vectors are accepted as AI or EPS inside a ZIP archive with a JPEG preview of at least the same 3.8 megapixels, with the archive also capped at 50 MB. And where a person's face is easily recognisable, a completed model release is required.
Pre-submission check for a Depositphotos upload
A two-part check before submitting to Depositphotos: the keyword rules from the platform's own guidance, and its stated file requirements for photos and vectors, including the 3.8 megapixel minimum and 50 MB ceiling.
A keywording pass that fits these rules
Start with the literal nouns: the subject, the objects, the setting. Add the action as a single verb form. Add the subject characteristics the guidance asks for — age band, angle of view. Add location at whatever level of specificity is actually true. Then add three to six concept words, and stop.
Read the finished list back once looking only for duplicates and phrases, since those are the two failures the platform names most directly. Then read the title on its own and ask whether it describes the subject to someone who cannot see the image. If it does, you have met the stated requirement.
If files are coming back rather than ranking badly, the problem is usually upstream of keywords — the common Depositphotos rejection reasons covers that side, and the contributor payout structure is worth reading before you decide how much of your portfolio to route here.
Doing it across a whole batch
The rules above are easy to follow on one image and tedious to follow on two hundred, which is where most contributors quietly start filling all 50 slots from a template. The way to avoid that is to separate the shared layer from the per-file layer: setting, shoot type and release status apply once to the batch, while subject, action and angle are decided per frame.
Enforcing the platform-specific parts mechanically helps too — a keyword cap, a banned-term list and a duplicate check applied to the whole batch catch exactly the failures Depositphotos names. That is the job Rastock's per-agency metadata rules do, alongside FTP and SFTP delivery to 10+ agencies; the 14-day trial runs without a card, and your metadata exports as IPTC, CSV or XML either way.
Frequently asked questions
How many keywords does Depositphotos allow per image?
The platform allows a maximum of 50 keywords per image, but its own contributor guidance recommends staying at no more than 25 to 30. The stated reason is ranking: a tighter set helps a file rank for the specific terms that actually describe it, rather than spreading its relevance thinly across fifty terms of which twenty are marginal. Treat 50 as the ceiling and 25 to 30 as the working target.
Can I use multi-word phrases as Depositphotos keywords?
You can type them, but the platform warns that a phrase or collocation may be divided into separate elements by its system, and it explicitly advises against entering descriptive phrases such as "woman sitting by the table" as keywords. The practical rule is to enter single descriptive words, and to let the title and description carry the sentence-level meaning. Established compound terms that function as one concept are the reasonable exception.
What does Depositphotos say to avoid in keywords?
Its guidance names three things directly: duplicated keywords, multi-word descriptive phrases used as keywords, and irrelevant descriptive statements such as "sun is shining, music is playing" that describe atmosphere rather than searchable content. Separately, its contributor advice tells submitters to avoid foreign words or phrases describing the image and filler text such as "Place your text here".
Do keywords affect anything besides Depositphotos' own search?
Yes. The platform notes in its own keywording guidance that many clients arrive at stock platforms from Google search, which means your keywords and title are working on two search systems at once. That is an argument for plain, widely used vocabulary over clever or internal terminology: a term nobody types into Google is not helping you on either surface.
What should I include beyond the obvious subject?
The platform's guidance asks contributors to describe everything present in the image, and specifically mentions subject characteristics such as age and the angle of depiction, plus location detail, whether that is a named city or a general description such as "studio". Buyers also filter heavily on Depositphotos, including by orientation, colour, number of people, indoor or outdoor and isolated or contextual backgrounds, so naming those attributes in words is rarely wasted.
When do I add keywords in the Depositphotos submission flow?
Not at the initial application stage. New contributors submit five samples of their work for examination, a process the platform describes as taking seven to ten business days, and its guidance says you do not need to fill in tags and descriptions at that point. Keywords and descriptions are added in your account after you pass the examination, so the metadata work belongs to the regular upload flow rather than the application.