Vecteezy reads three metadata fields on every file you submit, and only one of them is strictly required. The title has to be unique and under 100 characters, keywords should number 20 to 30 and be written in English, and descriptions are optional everywhere except editorial work. Keywords do the heaviest lifting here, because titles and descriptions are not searchable on the site at all.
The three fields, and which one carries the search
Vecteezy treats title, keywords and description as three separate jobs rather than three boxes to fill with the same sentence. Every resource needs its own unique title. The keyword field stops accepting entries at 30. The description is optional, and Vecteezy only presses for it on editorial content, where location and date matter.
One line in Vecteezy's keywording guidance should change how you write all three: titles and descriptions are not searchable on the site. A buyer's query runs against your keyword set and nothing else. That inverts the instinct most contributors bring from Google-shaped SEO, where the headline carries the term and the tags trail behind.
So the division of labour is clear once you accept it. The title exists for a human scanning a results page, and for the file's own identity in your archive. The keywords are the index. The description is context, and on editorial files it is the record of where and when the frame was made.
Title rules: under 100 characters, title case, no superlatives
Vecteezy asks for a title that is descriptive, factual, succinct, relevant and professional, and then gets unusually specific about the formatting, which is where batch-generated titles tend to fail.
- Keep titles to less than 100 characters.
- Capitalise the first letter of each word, except small words such as "of" and "the".
- Avoid punctuation marks: periods, commas, exclamation points, question marks and semicolons. Dashes, spaces and apostrophes are allowed, but overusing them is discouraged.
- Drop subjective words. Vecteezy names "brilliant", "amazing" and "best" explicitly.
- Every resource needs a unique title. Two files sharing one title is a review problem, not a style preference.
The title-case rule is the one that catches people at scale. Generate a thousand titles in sentence case, ship them in one batch, and you have a thousand small inconsistencies that cost nothing in search, because the title is not indexed, but still read as carelessness to a reviewer deciding whether the rest of the file was prepared properly.
A hundred characters is generous by Vecteezy standards and tight if you are reusing titles written for an agency that rewards long descriptive strings. Reused titles also tend to arrive carrying commas, which Vecteezy asks you to avoid. Both problems are cheaper to fix in the title you write once than in the batch you re-edit later.
Keywords are the index, so treat the cap as a budget
This is the field that decides whether anyone ever sees the file. Vecteezy's rules for it are short, and most of them are about restraint rather than volume.
- Use 20 to 30 precise keywords. The field accepts a maximum of 30, and Vecteezy encourages at least 10 different ones.
- Order matters. List the most relevant first, and treat the first five as the ones that have to be unmistakably about the picture.
- Keyword in English. The system treats everything you enter as English, so a non-English term is not a second-language bonus, it is a word that matches nothing.
- Separate with commas, and spell them correctly. Multi-word phrases are fine: "football player" counts as one keyword, not two.
- Add place. Vecteezy recommends city, state or province, country, and named landmarks where they apply.
- Use an ethnicity keyword only where the model release supports it. With no release, or with the model's ethnicity not recorded, leave the term out.
- No brand names, even when the brand is the accurate description. Vecteezy's own substitutions are the model: "Smart Phone", "Digital Tablet", "Compact Car".
- Do not paste one keyword set across the whole portfolio unless the resources genuinely are similar. Vecteezy asks for variety, and a repeated set makes near-duplicates compete with each other.
Thirty is a low ceiling. Adobe Stock accepts up to 49, so contributors moving one batch between several agencies usually arrive at Vecteezy with a list that needs cutting rather than extending. Cutting is the harder skill, because you are choosing the 30 terms that describe the file best, not the 49 you can defend.
The slots that get wasted are almost always the same ones. Format words, licence words and sales words describe the file or the transaction, not the picture: eps10, vector, high quality, royalty free, best seller. None of them is what a buyer types when they need an illustration of a delivery cart. On a 49-keyword agency they are merely dead weight. On a 30-keyword agency they are five or six missing descriptions.
Descriptions are optional, except where they are not
Vecteezy does not require a description, and then highly recommends one for editorial content. On editorial files the description is expected to carry the location as city, state and country, and the date or time of year the resource was created. That is not decoration: it is the detail that makes an editorial file licensable at all.
Where the description is genuinely optional, it is still the only field with room to record what is unusual about the file: the technique, the unexpected element, the reason a buyer would pick this frame over the nine next to it. Vecteezy asks for complete sentences and correct punctuation, which is the opposite of the title rule and worth keeping straight. And because the field is not searchable, there is no reason whatsoever to pack it with keywords.
The technical floor that no metadata can rescue
Metadata is checked on files that pass the specs, so the specs come first. A file below the megapixel floor is rejected no matter how well it is keyworded, and the time spent on its metadata is gone.
- Photos: JPG or JPEG compressed at the lowest available level, sRGB colour profile, no less than 4 megapixels, no larger than 50 megabytes. Megapixels come from width multiplied by height, not from file size.
- Vectors: EPS compatible with Adobe Illustrator 10, RGB or CMYK, maximum 50 megabytes, maximum 25 megapixels. The vector guidelines and the contributor checklist state the minimum differently, 3 and 4 megapixels, so 4 is the safe number to work to.
- Video: MP4, MOV, R3D or MOGRT, at least 5 seconds and no longer than 2 minutes, maximum 8 gigabytes, with 4K and HD preferred among the accepted sizes.
Does your file clear Vecteezy's floor?
Enter pixel dimensions and file size to see whether a file meets Vecteezy's published limits: photos from 4 megapixels and under 50 MB, EPS vectors under 25 megapixels and 50 MB. Limits are taken from Vecteezy's own contributor guidelines.
Releases are part of the submission, not an afterthought
A release is metadata in the sense that matters: it is a document the file cannot be licensed without, and Vecteezy expects it attached to the resource rather than filed on your own drive.
- A model release is required when the content includes a recognisable person. More than one recognisable person means a separate signed release for each of them.
- A minor release is required for models under 18.
- A signed property release is required if the content includes a recognisable object, building or property.
Vecteezy publishes its own release forms as downloadable PDFs, and releases are attached after the file is uploaded but before you submit it for approval. That ordering is the part worth remembering, because the submit button is the point of no return: a file submitted without the release it needs comes back, and on Vecteezy a rejection is not always limited to the one file that caused it.
The four-column CSV, and the order it insists on
Typing metadata into the portal for a hundred files is not a workflow, so Vecteezy lets a CSV carry it instead. The format is narrow and unforgiving about one thing in particular: column order.
- The file must be saved as .csv, and the first four columns must be Filename, Title, Description and Keywords, in that order.
- Filename is required on every row and sits in the first column. Spaces in filenames are not recommended, because the metadata may not process correctly.
- Extensions are excluded from the filename for FTP uploads, and optional on the Add Data page. This is the single detail most likely to break a CSV that worked last time through a different route.
- Title, Description and Keywords are each optional in the CSV, but anything you do put there has to follow the same metadata rules as the portal, with keywords separated by commas.
- Wrong column names or the wrong format produce an error rather than a partial import. You fix the file and retry.
Vecteezy metadata CSV
Fill a row or two and download a valid Vecteezy metadata CSV with the required four columns in order: Filename, Title, Description, Keywords. Titles are flagged past 100 characters and keyword lists outside the 10 to 30 range.
There are two ways in, and they differ in sequence rather than in format. Over FTP you upload the source files and the CSV together. Through the Add Data page you upload the source files first, then open Add Data, click Upload CSV, drop or paste the file, click Done, wait for the processing message at the top of the page, and refresh to see the metadata land. Nothing in the second path tells you the metadata is wrong until the refresh, so it pays to validate the CSV before it goes anywhere.
Where metadata quietly gets files rejected
Vecteezy's rejection list is longer than its metadata list, and a fair part of it is about language rather than pictures.
- Non-English text, or English text with errors. Local-language text inside the artwork is allowed only for specific, relevant festivities.
- Special characters, spelling and grammar mistakes, or words and phrases repeated excessively in the metadata itself.
- A year that does not match the current one, unless the year is ending and you are using the next one.
- Placeholder text holding sensitive information, working website URLs in placeholder text, or filler such as "set of icons".
- Watermarks, signatures, or any reference to Eezy inside the work.
Then there is the part that changes how you batch. Review can take up to 20 business days. If several files in one submission violate the standards, the entire submission can be rejected rather than just the offending files. And if your first two submitted batches are both rejected, the account is blocked. Those three rules together make the first two batches the ones to over-prepare, and make small, carefully checked submissions a better opening strategy than a thousand-file dump.
A metadata order of operations that survives a real batch
- Check the specs first. Megapixels, file size, colour mode, and for video the duration. A file that fails here never needs metadata.
- Write the keywords before the title. Twenty to thirty terms, in English, most relevant five at the front, no brands and no format words.
- Build the title out of the strongest keywords. Title case, under 100 characters, no commas or periods, no superlatives, unique across the batch.
- Add a description where it earns its place: every editorial file, with city, state, country and date, plus anything with a detail worth naming.
- Put it all in the four-column CSV, with the extension handling matched to the upload route you are about to use.
- Attach every release after the upload and before you submit, then submit in batches small enough that one bad file cannot take the rest down with it.
Running Vecteezy as one destination among several
None of these rules is difficult on its own. The difficulty is that they contradict the agency you uploaded to an hour ago. Thirty keywords against another platform's forty-nine, title case against sentence case, no commas against a format built on them. If you are still deciding how Vecteezy fits your portfolio, the contributor program guide covers the commercial side; if the clash itself is the problem, the case for one title and description set that satisfies every agency at once is the part worth reading next.
That is the problem Rastock.ai is built around: metadata written once against each agency's own rules, delivered over FTP to more than ten destinations, with the status of every file visible in one place rather than in ten dashboards. It does not take a revenue share, it makes no claim on your files, and IPTC and CSV export stay yours. You can see what it does and what it costs, and the 14-day trial needs no card.
Frequently asked questions
How many keywords does Vecteezy allow?
Vecteezy accepts a maximum of 30 keywords per resource and asks contributors to use 20 to 30 precise ones, with at least 10 different keywords as an encouraged floor. Because the cap is low and the first five positions carry the most relevance weight, treat 30 as a budget rather than a target. Spend the slots on what is visibly in the frame, the setting, the action and the concept, and leave out words describing the file format or the licence.
Are Vecteezy titles and descriptions searchable?
No. Vecteezy's keywording guidance states that titles and descriptions are not searchable on the site, which means a buyer's query is matched against your keyword set alone. Any term you want to be found by has to appear in the keywords, even if it already appears in the title. Vecteezy does say keywords can be drawn from the title, so the two fields can share vocabulary, but the keyword field is the one doing the work.
Is a description required on Vecteezy?
Descriptions are optional on Vecteezy, with one practical exception: the platform highly recommends them for editorial content, and asks that editorial descriptions include the location as city, state and country, plus the date or time of year the resource was created. Where a description is included it should be written in complete sentences with correct punctuation, and it should accurately describe the file and anything unique about it.
What columns does the Vecteezy metadata CSV need?
The file has to be saved as .csv, and its first four columns must be Filename, Title, Description and Keywords, in that order. Filename is required on every row; Title, Description and Keywords are each optional but must follow Vecteezy's metadata guidelines when present, with keywords separated by commas. Filename extensions are excluded for FTP uploads and optional on the Add Data page, and spaces in filenames are not recommended.
What are Vecteezy's minimum file requirements?
Photos must be JPG or JPEG compressed at the lowest available level, in sRGB, no less than 4 megapixels and no larger than 50 megabytes. Vectors must be EPS files compatible with Adobe Illustrator 10, in RGB or CMYK, also capped at 50 megabytes, with a published image-size ceiling of 25 megapixels. Video must be MP4, MOV, R3D or MOGRT, at least 5 seconds and no longer than 2 minutes, up to 8 gigabytes.
How long does Vecteezy review take?
Vecteezy's vector content guidelines state that review can take up to 20 business days. Two further rules make the wait worth preparing for: if several files in one submission violate the standards, the entire submission can be rejected rather than just the offending files, and if your first two submitted batches are both rejected, the account is blocked. That makes the first two batches the ones to over-check before sending.