Getty Images reviews your portfolio before it gives you an upload account, and that single fact separates it from most microstock agencies. You apply with sample work, a human decides, and only then do you get submission access. Applicants must be at least 18, and Getty does not accept generative AI content at all.
Who is eligible to apply
The eligibility bar itself is low. You need to be 18 or older, and you apply through Getty's own contributor application, which covers photos, video and illustration. There is no requirement for a degree, published credits or agency representation. What Getty is buying is the work, not the biography, and the review reflects that.
If your application succeeds, you are invited to sign a non-exclusive agreement with Getty Images (US), Inc. and can begin uploading files to iStock. Non-exclusive means what it sounds like: you can keep submitting the same work to other agencies. Exclusivity is a later choice, not an entry condition.
The application is a portfolio review, not a sign-up form
This is the part that surprises contributors arriving from agencies where you create an account and start uploading the same afternoon. At Getty you submit a set of sample images and wait for a decision. Reapplying after a rejection is allowed, but you are better off waiting until the work has genuinely improved rather than resubmitting the same set with a different crop.
What reviewers are weighing is commercial usefulness as much as technical quality. A technically flawless photograph of a subject the collection already holds ten thousand of is a weaker sample than a slightly less polished image of something buyers ask for and rarely find. Send work that fills a gap, and send a coherent set rather than a scattered sampler of every genre you have ever shot.
File specifications Getty enforces at upload
Once you are inside, the technical requirements are stricter in some places than microstock and looser in others. Getty asks for photos and vector illustrations submitted as JPEG, at up to 50MB per file, in RGB colour space. The size window is the part worth writing down:
- Minimum 3 megapixels. Smaller files are rejected at ingest, not at review.
- Maximum 256 megapixels. This mostly matters for stitched panoramas and high-resolution scans.
- Save at the highest JPEG quality setting, with no resizing applied on export.
- Use the highest resolution you actually captured. Do not upsize a small file to clear the minimum.
That 3 megapixel floor is lower than Shutterstock's, which sits at 4 megapixels. A 3.5 megapixel file is therefore acceptable at Getty and rejected at Shutterstock, which is exactly the kind of mismatch that quietly breaks a multi-agency batch. If you are unsure where your files sit, the resolution requirements across agencies are worth checking before you build a delivery set rather than after.
These numbers do change. Getty maintains a Preparing Your Content page in its contributor community, and that page is the version that counts on the day you upload. Treat any figure you read elsewhere, including this one, as a prompt to go and confirm it.
Generative AI is a hard no, not a checkbox
This is the requirement that catches the most applicants in 2026, because the industry is not aligned on it. Getty does not accept files created or modified using generative AI models, and it names them: Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly. There is no disclosure field that makes such a file acceptable. The answer is no.
What Getty does allow is limited retouching of your own original capture, including retouching performed with AI-assisted tools, and modification using traditional non-AI tools. The line sits between improving a photograph you took and generating an image you did not. Contributors who work across agencies have to hold two mental models at once, because Adobe Stock takes the opposite approach and accepts generative content provided you tick its "Created using generative AI tools" box at submission. The agency rules for AI-generated metadata differ enough that a single unlabelled batch sent everywhere is a compliance problem waiting to happen.
Exclusive and non-exclusive are different businesses
Every accepted contributor starts non-exclusive. That agreement lets you submit files to iStock without committing your catalogue, and lets you keep every other agency relationship you already have. Later you can apply to become an exclusive creator, which raises your royalty rate but restricts where the same content may appear.
The exclusive route only makes arithmetic sense if iStock is already producing a meaningful share of your income, because you are trading breadth for rate. Contributors earning steadily across several agencies usually find the non-exclusive path safer, for the same reason that comparing what Adobe Stock and Shutterstock actually pay tends to argue for spreading rather than concentrating. Getty publishes an iStock rate card, and the current version is the only one worth planning against.
Metadata is where accepted contributors still lose money
Passing the portfolio review gets you in the door. It does not get you found. Getty and iStock run their own search, and a file that is technically perfect but described in four vague words will sit unlicensed next to a weaker image that was described precisely. This is the least glamorous requirement on the list and the one with the clearest link to income.
The practical difficulty is that no two agencies want the same shape of metadata. Adobe Stock caps titles at 70 characters and forbids commas inside them, while Shutterstock wants a description that reads as a sentence answering who, what, when and where. Both cap keywords at 50, but Shutterstock also sets a floor of seven. If you already know what Adobe Stock requires from metadata, you cannot simply reuse those fields at Getty and assume they fit.
Three habits do most of the work. Describe what the image literally shows before you describe what it represents, so that both a literal and a conceptual search can find it. Order keywords by relevance rather than alphabetically, because several agencies weight the earliest terms most heavily. And keep camera settings, trademarks and file names out of the keyword field entirely, since they are the fastest route to a metadata rejection.
What a realistic first three months looks like
Assume the application decision takes weeks rather than days, and use that time rather than waiting on it. Build the batch you intend to upload, check it against the size and colour requirements, write the metadata properly, and sort out model and property releases for anything with an identifiable person or private property in frame. Releases are the single most common reason a good image cannot be licensed commercially, and they are far easier to collect at the shoot than six months later.
Once you are accepted, upload consistently rather than in one large burst. A steady flow gives you feedback you can act on, whereas dumping two thousand files and waiting produces a single verdict on work you can no longer adjust. Contributors starting from zero will find the broader beginner's guide to selling stock photography a useful companion to this checklist.
Where automation helps and where it does not
No tool will get you through the Getty portfolio review. That gate is about the pictures, and software has nothing useful to say about whether a photograph is worth licensing. What software can do is remove the repetitive work that sits either side of it: writing metadata for hundreds of files, keeping each agency's field limits straight, and delivering the same set to several destinations without re-typing anything.
That is the part Rastock AI is built for. It reads your files, writes titles, descriptions and keywords, applies your own banned and mandatory keyword rules so nothing goes out that breaks an agency policy, and delivers over FTP or SFTP to 10+ agencies with per-file status you can actually see. It does not take a revenue share, does not claim ownership of your files, and lets you export IPTC, CSV or XML and walk away whenever you want. You can look at how the pipeline works or at what it costs, and the 14-day trial does not ask for a card.
The honest summary of Getty Images contributor requirements is that the hard part is the work and the tedious part is everything else. The eligibility rules are short, the file specs are published, and the generative AI position is unambiguous. Read the current specs on Getty's own pages the week you apply, send a tight set of images that fills a real gap, and keep your metadata disciplined once you are in.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need professional experience to become a Getty Images contributor?
No. There is no requirement for a photography degree, published credits or agency representation. The application is judged on the sample work you submit, so a small set of genuinely strong, commercially useful images will get further than a large set of average ones. Reviewers are assessing whether the work fits the collection, not your background.
What is the minimum image size Getty Images accepts?
Getty asks for files of at least 3 megapixels and no larger than 256 megapixels, saved as JPEG at the highest quality setting in RGB, with no upsizing. Because these numbers can change, confirm them on Getty's own Preparing Your Content page before preparing a batch. The 3 megapixel floor is lower than Shutterstock's 4 megapixel minimum, so a file can pass one and fail the other.
Does Getty Images accept AI-generated images?
No. Getty does not accept files created or modified using generative AI models such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Midjourney or Adobe Firefly, and there is no disclosure option that changes this. Limited retouching of your own original photograph is allowed, including with AI-assisted retouching tools, as is modification using traditional non-AI tools. This differs from Adobe Stock, which accepts generative content when it is labelled at submission.
Do I have to be exclusive to Getty Images?
No. Successful applicants are invited to sign a non-exclusive agreement with Getty Images (US), Inc., which lets you upload to iStock while continuing to submit the same work to other agencies. Becoming an exclusive creator is a separate application you can make later. Exclusivity raises your royalty rate but restricts where your content may appear, so it only pays off once iStock is a significant share of your income.
How long does the Getty Images contributor application take?
There is no published turnaround, and reported waits range from several days to several weeks depending on volume and the type of content you submitted. Use the waiting period to prepare your first upload batch rather than to keep refreshing your inbox. If you are rejected you may apply again, but resubmitting the same images with minor edits rarely changes the outcome.
What file formats can I submit to Getty Images and iStock?
Photos and vector illustrations are submitted as JPEG, up to 50MB per file, in RGB colour space and saved at the highest JPEG setting. Video has its own specification set that differs from stills. Because the accepted formats and size ceilings are revised periodically, check Getty's current contributor documentation rather than relying on a figure quoted in a third-party guide.