Alamy metadata rules
From third-party sources Compiled from other people's guides and not yet verified against official documentation — please check the agency's own page before relying on it.
No CSV upload, and your first 10 tags carry special weight
keyword
- Up to 50 tags, and the first 10 count as supertags with the greatest search weight.
- Alamy's search does not stem words — cat and cats are different terms, so add both if you want both.
- The minimum to be sellable is a caption plus at least 5 tags.
caption
- Keep it under 150 characters.
Uploading
- No CSV upload — enter metadata on the website, or embed IPTC in the file and let Alamy read it.
editorial
- Use the Caption, Location and Date taken fields, all of which can be read from the file's IPTC.
- Set the file to Sell for editorial only.
- Live News is a separate system you must be approved for, with its own caption format.
A tool that does it for you
KeywordStock produces the title, description, keywords and CSV in Alamy's exact format automatically, reading your files on your own computer — no uploads.
Download the app