Guidelines for submitting images to Alamy

Stock photos and illustrations

Photography and illustrations need to pass our Quality Control (QC) checks. Make sure you check your images before you submit them so you can be confident they’ll pass QC. Please note we are not currently accepting AI-generated imagery.

How to pass QC:

• There are a number of reasons why images might fail
  Have a read of our guide on how to pass QC to avoid them.
• Use a DSLR camera (or equivalent)
  Most point & shoot, bridge cameras and all mobile phones will struggle to pass our QC checks, you’ll need a camera with a good quality lens and large enough sensor. See our rough guide to digital cameras for more info.
• Check your images at 100%
  All images should be checked at 100% (actual pixels) for correct exposure, colour cast, noise, camera shake and that no sharpening has been applied etc. using professional imaging software.
• JPEGs
  You can shoot or illustrate in whatever format you like, but you’ll need to submit your images to us as JPEGs.
• File size of over 17MB (when uncompressed/open)
  Your JPEG file is likely to have a compressed size of 3-5MB. Opening a JPEG in an image program such as Adobe Photoshop will show you the uncompressed/open file size.

For more info on QC, see the How we check your images section.

Reportage/Archival

We have an additional upload route for collections of reportage or archival images which might not meet our technical standards for regular stock imagery.

We have high customer demand for this type of imagery, so if you have a collection then make sure you let us know.

• What do we mean by reportage images?
  Photojournalistic images illustrating a story but captured under difficult circumstances and might not pass our standard QC checks. Examples include photo essays or features.
• What do we mean by archival images?
  Images that are historically or culturally significant, examples include film stills, press archives and specialist collections.

You can apply for Reportage/Archival image upload under the Additional revenue options on your contributor dashboard.

Live News

Newsworthy photography captured within 24 hours of the event has different requirements to stock. To find out more, check out the Live News section.

360-degree spherical panoramic images

These images are usually several pictures stitched together to create a 360-degree, spherical image that is fixed around a central point. You can upload 360-degree images to Alamy, provided they fit the following criteria:

• The images must contain Photosphere XMP metadata.
• Projection type must be Equirectangular.
• The image must have an exact 2:1 aspect ratio, as it’s uniformly mapping 360° horizontally and 180° vertically.
• Maximum compressed file size of 200mb.
• The image must be free of stitching errors and have little optical distortion, with uniformity in luminosity and colours.

For your first 360-degree upload, we’ll need you to submit 3 images to pass quality control before you can start to upload larger or smaller batches, even if you’ve already got regular stock images on sale.

Mobile

Currently you can’t upload mobile phone images to the Alamy Platform but we’ll be opening up this route for upload soon.