Envato Elements reads your title, description and tags before a human reviewer ever opens the file, and it pulls most of them straight out of the metadata embedded in the image. Photo and video items take up to 50 tags, titles cap at 100 characters, and photos have to arrive as JPG in RGB between 4 and 80 megapixels.
One thing worth saying before the detail: Envato's own author help centre currently lists Elements applications as closed. The platform runs a selective intake model, so the rules below matter to two groups — authors already publishing on Elements, who upload against them every day, and anyone preparing a portfolio for the next time intake reopens. Nothing here is a prediction about when that happens, because Envato has not published a date.
What Envato Elements asks for on every item
Every Elements submission carries four pieces of information that reviewers and the search engine both use: a title, a description, a set of tags, and a category. On top of those sit metadata attributes — resolution, file size, length, frame rate, alpha channel, whether a video loops — some of which the system reads from the file and some of which you set yourself on the item edit page or in Portfolio Manager.
Elements uses a different category structure from Envato Market, which trips up authors who have sold on Market for years. The seven content types are Web Themes, Code, Video, Audio, Graphics, Photos and 3D files, and each one has its own subcategories and item types. Submitting a file through the wrong category form is listed as a standalone rejection reason, and the fix is a resubmission through the correct form rather than an edit.
Envato Elements title rules: 100 characters, two keywords maximum
The hard limit is 100 characters including spaces. Within that, Envato asks for English characters only, Title Case, and industry-standard capitalisation left intact — jQuery and WordPress stay as they are normally written rather than being flattened into title case.
The rule that catches most stock contributors is the keyword ceiling in the title itself: no more than two main keywords. Anything beyond that belongs in tags. If you are used to writing long descriptive titles for other agencies, where stuffing three or four search terms into a title is normal practice, Envato will read the same title as keyword stuffing. Its guidance names that explicitly — repeating a word, repeating words that share a stem, listing more than two keywords, or adding irrelevant keywords all count.
Also banned from titles: all caps, all lowercase, subjective words, your own username, unrelated information, brand names and trademarks, and any phrasing that positions your file as similar to another product — the example Envato gives is describing something as an "Apple-like Design".
Tags: the 50-tag ceiling and the blacklisted words
Tag limits differ by content type, and this is the single most useful number to memorise if you publish more than one kind of file. Photos and video take a maximum of 50 tags. Audio and graphics take 30. Theme and code items take 15. Envato does not publish a minimum, but its rejection guidance lists items with no tags, or with irrelevant and misleading tags, as rejected under incorrect tags — so the practical floor is "enough relevant terms to describe the file honestly".
The formatting rules are stricter than most agencies. Tags go in lowercase unless the term is an acronym, separated by a comma with an optional leading space, in American English spelling. Phrases are allowed. Each tag can be up to 100 characters, and the whole tag field has to stay at 2,048 characters or fewer.
There are also character restrictions that will silently break an otherwise good tag set. A tag cannot be a whole number, although tags that merely begin with a number are fine. A tag cannot start with a period, and cannot end with an ampersand, underscore, plus or hyphen. These characters are not allowed anywhere in a tag: ! # $ % ( ) * < = > ? @ { } [ ] ^ ~ — nor is non-standard whitespace, which is the one that bites when keywords have been pasted out of a spreadsheet.
Then there is the blacklist, which applies to both titles and tags. These words are not allowed: Amazing, Awesome, Best, Bundle, Discount, Free, Premium, Pro, Ultimate — along with any swear words or derogatory and offensive language. Pack, Collection and Set are allowed in titles, but only within Envato's bundle rules. Usernames cannot be appended to titles or tags, and neither can the titles of your other items.
Envato Elements metadata pre-submit check
Tick through Envato's own metadata rules before you submit: the 100-character title cap with a two-keyword maximum, the tag ceiling for your content type (50 for photos and video, 30 for audio and graphics, 15 for theme and code), the blacklisted words, and the description rules that forbid links, HTML and keyword lists.
Description rules: a real description, not a keyword dump
Envato does not publish a character limit for descriptions. What it publishes instead is a standard: the description has to accurately describe the item, including its technical specifications and limitations, and say what the main file actually contains. Plain language, broken into paragraphs with headings when the text runs long.
Two specifics are easy to get wrong. First, Elements descriptions cannot contain links or HTML — they take markdown in the Text Description field, and links that drive traffic to competing sites are not allowed even when the site is your own. If a buyer needs a free font download or an external resource, that goes in the Documentation file instead. Second, anything visible in your preview that is not in the download has to be declared, and any asset requiring attribution has to be credited.
The rejection guidance puts it more bluntly: descriptions should briefly and coherently describe what is in the submission, and keyword or tag lists are not allowed in the description field at all. Pasting your tag string into the description is a rejection, not a shortcut.
Envato Elements photo requirements: JPG, RGB, 4 to 80 megapixels
Photo items are narrower than most contributors expect. The upload system takes JPG only and ignores other file types, so a TIFF or PNG does not fail with a warning — it simply does not arrive. Colour space is RGB. Resolution has both a floor and a ceiling: 4.0 megapixels minimum and 80.0 megapixels maximum, with upsampling of the photo or of individual elements inside it explicitly ruled out.
That upper bound is unusual, and it is worth checking against your own output if you shoot on a high-resolution body or stitch panoramas. A 100-megapixel stitch is over the line. Watermarked previews are generated automatically by Envato, so the file you send must not carry your own watermark, date stamp or signature over the image.
Does your photo fit the Elements resolution window?
Enter a photo's pixel dimensions and file size to check them against Envato Elements' published photo specs: JPG only, RGB colour space, and a resolution window of 4.0 megapixels minimum to 80.0 megapixels maximum, with no upsampling allowed.
How Envato reads your embedded metadata
This is the part that changes how you work, and it is the part most guides skip. Envato does not only take what you type into the form — it reads the metadata embedded in the file, in a published priority order. For the title it looks at XMP Title first, then IPTC ObjectName, then IPTC Title, then IPTC Headline. For the description it reads IPTC Caption first, then XMP Description. For tags it reads IPTC Keywords first, then XMP Subject.
Two things follow from that. If your embedded metadata is wrong, Envato inherits the mistake before you ever look at the form. And if your embedded metadata is right, the form fills itself and a batch upload becomes genuinely hands-off. The priority order also means a stale IPTC Headline can win over the title you meant to use, which is a good reason to understand how IPTC and XMP fields actually map to each other before you run a thousand files through.
In practice this makes Envato one of the more forgiving platforms to automate, provided the embedded fields are clean. Write the title into XMP Title, the caption into IPTC Caption and the keyword list into IPTC Keywords, and the item arrives with its metadata already in place.
Upload methods and where the metadata is set
Elements stock video, graphics, photos and 3D items are uploaded through Portfolio Manager at portfolio.envato.com, by browsing or dragging files in. FTP is also still listed as supported for audio, stock video, graphics and photos. The Portfolio Manager FTP endpoint is ftp.aws.portfolio.envato.com on port 21 with explicit FTP over TLS, authenticating with your Envato username — which is case-sensitive — and your Envato API key as the password, uploading into the designated folder for your content type.
Audio on Envato Market uses a separate host, ftp.marketplace.envato.com, with the same port and encryption, and carries a detail worth noting: FTP uploads there remain in the system for 24 hours only. The help centre's FTP section for photos repeats the graphics wording about 3D and animated graphics not being supported, which reads like a copy-paste artefact rather than a photo restriction, so treat that one sentence with caution and check your own dashboard rather than this page.
The practical point for anyone delivering at volume: because Envato reads embedded metadata, the FTP route and the embedded-metadata route reinforce each other. Files land, the system reads IPTC and XMP, and the only remaining manual step is category selection and any attribute the system cannot infer.
Metadata mistakes that get Elements items rejected
Envato publishes its common rejection reasons, and several of them are purely metadata problems rather than image problems. Incorrect description and incorrect tags appear as named reasons. Items with no tags, or with tags that are irrelevant or misleading, are rejected. Submitting through the wrong category is a separate reason with its own remedy.
Others are adjacent but still worth knowing, because a strong metadata set will not rescue them: quality below the technical minimum, over-compression, logos or URLs or watermarks in the file, insufficient commercial utility, files too similar to what the library already holds, maturity-guideline breaches, non-Envato watermarked assets in the main file, and copyrighted content that cannot be licensed as commercial stock. Recognisable people and protected locations need signed releases zipped together with the submission.
One rule deserves its own line because contributors break it so often: resubmitting without making the required changes is not acceptable use. Soft-rejected items should be updated directly; hard-rejected items need significant improvement before they go back in. Re-uploading the same file with a reshuffled tag list is the fastest way to turn a soft rejection into a harder one.
Where Envato's rules clash with your other agencies
If you deliver the same shoot to several platforms, Envato is the one that forces a second version of your text. The two-keyword title ceiling is tighter than most agencies encourage, the blacklisted words include terms other platforms happily accept, and the ban on repeated stems means a keyword set built for a search engine that rewards variants will read as stuffing here. This is exactly the case for keeping one canonical metadata set and a per-agency mapping on top of it rather than retyping everything per destination.
The resolution window is the other clash. A 4-megapixel floor is low by current standards, but the 80-megapixel ceiling is a real constraint that most agencies do not impose, so a file that passes everywhere else can still fail here — worth reading alongside the resolution minimums the major agencies actually publish. For how tag choice interacts with what Elements buyers are actually looking for, there is a separate piece on tagging for Envato Elements design trends.
A workable routine
Write the title at or under 100 characters with two main keywords and nothing from the blacklist. Write a description that reads as a description, in markdown, without links. Build the tag set to the ceiling for your content type, lowercase, comma-separated, American English, no repeated stems, no forbidden characters. Embed all three into XMP Title, IPTC Caption and IPTC Keywords. Check the photo is JPG, RGB and inside the 4-to-80-megapixel window. Then upload, pick the right category, and leave it alone rather than resubmitting variations.
Doing that by hand for a few files is fine. Doing it for a few hundred, across platforms whose rules contradict each other, is where the time goes — which is the problem Rastock.ai was built for: generate the metadata once, hold it to each agency's own banned and mandatory keyword rules, write it into IPTC and XMP, and deliver over FTP or SFTP to 10+ agencies with per-file status you can actually see. You can look at what it does and what it costs, and there is a 14-day free trial with no card required. Your files stay yours — no revenue share, no ownership claim, and IPTC and CSV export are always available if you want to walk away with your metadata.
Frequently asked questions
How many tags can an Envato Elements photo have?
Photo and video items accept a maximum of 50 tags. Audio and graphics items cap at 30, and theme and code items at 15. Envato's metadata guidance states no minimum, but its rejection guidance lists missing tags as a rejection reason, so submitting with none will fail review. Each tag can run up to 100 characters, and the whole tag field has to stay at 2,048 characters or fewer.
What is the Envato Elements title character limit?
Titles are capped at 100 characters including spaces. Envato also asks for English characters only and Title Case, with industry capitalisation preserved for names like WordPress or jQuery. The title itself may carry no more than two main keywords, and everything else belongs in tags. All caps, all lowercase, subjective words, usernames, brand names and trademarks are not allowed.
What resolution do Envato Elements photos need?
Photos must be between 4.0 and 80.0 megapixels, submitted as JPG in RGB colour space at the highest available quality. The upper limit is the one that catches people out, since stitched panoramas and high-resolution camera output can exceed 80 megapixels. Upsampling the photo, or any element within it, is not allowed, and the image must carry no custom watermark, date stamp or signature.
Does Envato Elements read embedded IPTC and XMP metadata?
Yes, and in a published priority order. For the title it reads XMP Title first, then IPTC ObjectName, IPTC Title and IPTC Headline. For the description it reads IPTC Caption first, then XMP Description. For tags it reads IPTC Keywords first, then XMP Subject. A stale IPTC Headline can therefore override the title you intended, so clean embedded fields matter before a batch upload.
Which words are banned in Envato titles and tags?
Envato blacklists Amazing, Awesome, Best, Bundle, Discount, Free, Premium, Pro and Ultimate, along with any swear words or derogatory and offensive language. Pack, Collection and Set are allowed in titles within Envato's bundle rules. You also cannot append your username, use another item's title, reference a brand or trademark, or describe your work as similar to another product.
Can you still apply to become an Envato Elements author?
Envato's author help centre currently lists Elements applications as closed, since the platform runs a selective intake model rather than open signup. No reopening date has been published. Its guidance for when intake resumes asks applicants to use their full name, submit recent rather than best-selling work, show variety, and demonstrate a sustained publishing plan rather than one or two files.