Vecteezy splits rejections into two groups, and the group matters more than the wording. A soft rejection asks you to correct something and send the file back. A hard rejection means that file is finished on Vecteezy, and resubmitting it costs a review slot and risks a second rejection for duplicate content.
Soft or hard: read that before you read the reason
Vecteezy writes its rejection notices as sentences rather than codes, and almost all of them open with a variant of the same phrase. That sameness makes them easy to skim. The signal you actually need sits in how the reason is classed in Vecteezy's own documentation: correct and resubmit, or do not resubmit.
The dashboard mirrors that split. Files needing work can be filtered under Action Needed; files that are finished show as Declined. Treating every rejection as an invitation to resubmit is the most expensive habit a new contributor can pick up, because duplicate and previously rejected submissions are themselves a hard-rejection reason across all three content types.
Review is not quick either. Vecteezy's own description of the process puts manual review at roughly seven to ten days on average, with files handled in the order received, and approved files taking a further 24 to 48 hours to export and go live. A wasted resubmission costs a week and a half, not an afternoon.
Photo rejections, reason by reason
Photos carry the shortest of the three lists, and it divides cleanly. Everything on the soft side is a production or paperwork problem you can go back and solve. Everything on the hard side is a judgement about the image itself, which no amount of re-editing changes in the reviewer's eyes.
The soft list: correct and resubmit
Metadata issues come first and are the most common of the lot. Vecteezy names four triggers: special characters, spelling or grammar errors, excessive repetition, and non-English keywords. Correct the field and send the file back. Nothing about the image needs to change.
A corrupted file means loading errors or damage, and asks for a replacement upload. A model or property release issue means the required release is missing or inadequate, so add or fix it and resubmit. A signature issue means a signature, watermark or other author mark is visible in the frame; remove it and the file is eligible again.
Copyright and trademark sits on the soft list for photos, but with a condition worth reading twice. If a logo or brand appears incidentally, obscure it and resubmit. If the brand is the subject of the picture, the file is finished and resubmitting it will not help.
The last three are post-processing calls. Exposure issues mean the frame is under or over exposed. Over-editing issues mean excess sharpening, noise reduction or masking has caused pixelation. Colour issues cover colour balance, saturation and vignetting. All three ask you to go back to the raw file rather than push the edit further.
The hard list: do not resubmit
The general reasons notice covers work that is similar to other submissions, unsuitable for commercial use, or short of Vecteezy's stylistic requirements. Similar or duplicate submissions is its own reason, and applies to files too close to something you have already sent. Outdated issues is narrower than it sounds: it refers to past holiday images carrying a visible date that marks them obsolete.
Four reasons are purely technical judgements: focus issues for soft or insufficient focus, styling issues, composition issues, and artifacts or noise issues for dust spots, high ISO and pixelation. Lack of commercial value is the broadest of all, and ethical issues or sensitive content covers political, violent, pornographic or otherwise offensive material.
One hard reason has a useful workaround. If a photo submission is rejected for 3D elements, Vecteezy's own guidance is not to fight the rejection but to send EPS files to the vector collection instead. The content is welcome; the collection was wrong.
The decoder below lays the photo and video reasons side by side so you can check a notice against its group before you touch the file.
Vecteezy rejection decoder
Each Vecteezy rejection reason for photos and video, grouped as correct-and-resubmit or final, with what the notice actually asks you to change and whether a resubmission is worth the seven to ten day review wait.
Vectors carry a separate, longer list
Vecteezy began as a vector marketplace, and the vector rejection list still shows it. There are more soft reasons here than anywhere else, which is good news: most vector rejections are fixable in the file you already have.
File-level reasons come first. Corrupted or missing files covers damage and files that are not EPS 10. Image ratio issues means the preview uses an unsupported aspect ratio. Artboard issues means the artwork does not match the artboard size. Layers issues covers locked or poorly arranged layers, and layer names that are not in English.
Then come the design conventions, and these catch people who have never read the guidelines. Corner banners and badges used to display information are rejected. Text containing errors covers spelling mistakes, outdated wording and text that does not fit its context. Productized templates means original artwork shown next to a sales-style product display, which has to come out.
Placeholders have two rules of their own. A placeholder photo inside a template needs its own adequate release, or it has to be removed. Placeholder text must not contain real names or addresses; fabricated names, or first names only, are what Vecteezy asks for. Logos are the strictest case: single-logo templates are not accepted at all, and logos are only welcome in multi-logo packs or inside a mockup or marketing design.
On the hard side, rasterized issues is the one that surprises illustrators most often: linked images, bitmaps and raster effects inside an EPS all count. Commercial value issues covers composition simplicity, technical quality, tracing and style. Copyright and trademark issues here includes characters and work that imitates another creator, and sits on the hard list rather than the soft one.
Video rejections start at the technical gate
Video has the shortest list of the three, and one reason does most of the work. Technical Issue is a single soft rejection covering resolution, format, codec, bitrate, frame rate, duration and audio together, which means the notice tells you less than you would like and you have to check the spec yourself.
The spec Vecteezy publishes is specific enough to check in a minute. 4K and HD are preferred and 2K is accepted. Container is MP4 or MOV. Codec is H.264 or ProRes. Duration runs from five seconds to two minutes. Audio is only wanted where it adds something to the clip, and must carry no errors, no unintended speech and no unlicensed music.
The other two soft video reasons are familiar: a missing or invalid model or property release, and irrelevant metadata where the title and keywords are not unique, relevant and accurate. On the hard side there are three. Duplicate, similar or previously rejected submissions, which explicitly includes clips you have already had refused. Insufficient aesthetic value, which Vecteezy attributes to lighting, oversupplied subjects, inauthentic models, focus, composition or dated styling. And explicit or trademarked content.
Metadata is the rejection you cause yourself
Metadata appears as a soft rejection on all three content types, which makes it the one rejection category that is entirely within your control and entirely avoidable. It is also the one that scales badly: whatever habit produced it in one file is usually sitting in the other forty-nine of the batch. The Vecteezy field reference covers the limits in detail; what matters here is the four things that trip the rejection.
Special characters are the easiest to leave behind by accident. Em dashes, curly quotes and ampersands arrive in a title the moment you paste from a word processor, and a batch exported through a template carries them into every row. Spelling and grammar errors are judged by a human reviewer reading English, so a title written quickly in a second language is a real risk.
Excessive repetition is the one worth dwelling on, because it is usually deliberate. A contributor with a keyword cap to fill pads the list with singulars and plurals of the same word, then the same noun with three adjectives in front of it. That reads as padding to a reviewer and as repetition to the rejection criteria. A shorter, accurate set passes where a full, padded one does not.
Non-English keywords are a flat rule, and it extends further than most people expect. Vecteezy's vector guidance also asks for layer names in English, so a working file built in another language can fail on a field the contributor never thinks of as metadata at all.
AI-generated files follow their own path
Disclosure is a checkbox, not a sentence in the description. Vecteezy asks you to tick the AI-generated box in the Add Data section and then name the program used from a dropdown, and that requirement extends to content merely altered with AI tools, not only content generated from scratch. Skipping the box is the kind of error that gets noticed on the second file rather than the first. Disclosure rules vary considerably between agencies, which is covered in the cross-agency guide to AI metadata rules.
Three conditions then decide acceptance. AI photo content must be photorealistic, because illustrated photo content is not accepted into the photo collection. Files must be technically flawless, and anything with distortion, pixelation or warping is rejected for technical quality and, in Vecteezy's words, may not be resubmitted. Files must be unique, with very noticeable differences in composition, elements and style between them, which rules out generating forty variations of one prompt.
Releases work differently for AI work and the distinction is precise. A model release is required if the result includes a real person, and that includes putting a real person's name in the prompt. A property release is required if you used a reference image, and you must own full copyright to that reference. No release is required where the content came from a text prompt alone. AI files are not eligible for the Editorial collection at all.
Would these six files pass?
The gap between knowing the rules and applying them shows up on borderline files. Each case below maps onto a reason from the lists above.
Accept or reject: six Vecteezy cases
Six borderline submissions judged against Vecteezy's published rejection reasons, covering incidental trademarks, padded keyword sets, AI disclosure, 3D elements in the photo collection, single-logo templates and clip duration limits.
Suggested for Free or Editorial is not really a rejection
Two notices sit on both the soft and hard lists and belong in neither category properly. Content Not Accepted as Pro and Suggested for Free means the file fell short of Pro standards but is welcome in the Free collection. Content Not Accepted as Commercial and Suggested for Editorial means it can go into Editorial only. Both are offers rather than refusals, and accepting one gets the file live. What that does to your earnings depends on which royalty model you are working under, which the contributor program guide sets out. AI files, as above, cannot take the Editorial route.
What to do in the first hour after a rejection
Classify before you act. Find the reason on the soft or hard list and decide whether a resubmission is even permitted. If it is soft, change only the thing named and nothing else, because a second rejection on a different reason wastes another review cycle. If it is hard, close the file and move on.
Then think at batch level rather than file level. One metadata rejection in a batch of fifty almost never means one bad file; it means a template, a habit or an export preset that produced the same fault fifty times, and the other forty-nine are simply still in the queue. Fixing the batch before the rest of it is reviewed saves far more time than fixing the one file that came back.
Keep a record of the reason against the filename. Rejection criteria change, and a contributor with six months of logged reasons can see a shift in what reviewers are enforcing well before it is announced. A contributor working from memory only notices when the acceptance rate drops.
Running Vecteezy as one destination among several
Almost nobody submits to Vecteezy alone, and that is where the metadata rejections come from. A keyword set written for one agency's cap, pasted into another agency's form, picks up exactly the repetition and irrelevance that Vecteezy's reviewers refuse. The work is not writing better titles so much as holding one accurate set of facts about each file and letting each destination take the shape it wants.
That is the problem Rastock.ai was built around: generating metadata that respects each agency's field rules, including banned and mandatory keyword lists, and then delivering over FTP or SFTP to 10+ agencies with the status of each batch visible in one place. You can see what it does and what it costs, and the 14-day trial does not ask for a card. Your files stay yours: no revenue share, no ownership claim, and IPTC and CSV export are free to take elsewhere.
Frequently asked questions
How long does Vecteezy take to review a submission?
Vecteezy describes manual review as taking roughly seven to ten days on average, with files handled in the order they were received, though volume moves that figure. Once a file is approved it joins an export queue and goes live within a further 24 to 48 hours. A resubmission starts the clock again, which is why it pays to be certain a rejection was the correctable kind.
Can I resubmit content Vecteezy rejected?
It depends which kind of rejection you got. Vecteezy splits its reasons into soft rejections, which ask you to correct something and resubmit, and hard rejections, which should not be resubmitted. Metadata errors, missing releases, exposure, colour and corrupted files sit on the soft side. Focus, composition, duplication, commercial value and sensitive content sit on the hard side.
What is the difference between Action Needed and Declined on Vecteezy?
They are the two dashboard filters for rejected work. Action Needed holds files that received a soft rejection and can still be approved once you make the change the notice asks for. Declined holds files that were permanently rejected. Checking the filter before you touch a file tells you whether a resubmission is even possible.
Why does Vecteezy reject files for metadata?
Vecteezy names four triggers: special characters, spelling or grammar errors, excessive repetition, and non-English keywords. Repetition is the most common, because contributors pad keyword lists with singular and plural forms of the same words to fill the cap. A shorter accurate set passes where a padded full one is refused. Metadata rejections are soft, so you correct the field and resubmit.
Does Vecteezy accept AI-generated images?
Yes, with conditions. You tick the AI-generated box in Add Data and name the program used, including for content merely altered with AI tools. Photo submissions must be photorealistic, since illustrated photo content is not accepted. Files with distortion, pixelation or warping are rejected for technical quality and cannot be resubmitted, and each file needs very noticeable differences from your others.
What does Suggested for Free mean on Vecteezy?
It means the file did not meet the Pro collection standard but is welcome in the Free collection, and you can accept that placement to get it live. A related notice suggests Editorial for content that cannot be licensed commercially. Neither is a refusal. AI-generated files are the exception on the second one, as they are not eligible for Editorial.