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Free web tool

Stock Photo Keyword Cleaner

Paste the keywords for a stock photo. They come back lowercased, with duplicates and a short list of generic words removed, and then fitted to Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Alamy, Vecteezy and Dreamstime: cut to each agency's limit, with the characters Vecteezy rejects folded out. Nothing you paste leaves your browser.

Editorial caption

Only for editorial photos. Dreamstime says date and location are mandatory in editorial captions. This puts them first, as in Atlanta, Georgia - October 2026: followed by your caption.

A Mac app that writes the keywords too

I am deciding whether to build a Mac app for stock contributors. It would write a caption and keywords for each photo on your Mac, with no upload to a keywording service, apply these agency rules, and export the CSV each agency takes. It does not exist yet. If you want it, leave an email and you will get one message when it ships.

Where do you upload? (optional)

How to clean stock photo keywords

  1. Paste your keywords. Paste them from Lightroom, a CSV cell or an agency form. Commas, semicolons and line breaks all work as separators.
  2. Read what was removed. The line under the box counts the duplicates and generic words that came out. Untick the generic-word box to keep those words.
  3. Copy each agency's list. Each card shows the list cut to that agency's limit, with what was cut or changed. Copy it into the agency's form or your CSV.
  4. Build an editorial caption if you need one. For an editorial photo, fill in the place and date to put the location and date line in front of your caption.

Where the agency rules come from

Questions

Is my text uploaded?
No. The keywords are cleaned by JavaScript in this page, and nothing you paste is sent anywhere. The only thing the page sends is an anonymous count that the tool was used, and the notify-me form if you fill it in.
Which words count as generic?
Nine words: travel, tourism, nature, summer, outdoor, outdoors, lifestyle, landmark and wilderness. Each was used 98 to 301 times across my own stock portfolio, and none of them appeared in the 238 searches buyers made on my Alamy images in September 2026. That is one portfolio and one month, so the box is a choice, not a rule. Buyers searched for specific places and things instead, such as hyde park london.
Where do the limits come from?
From each agency's own contributor pages, read on 31 October 2026 and linked on this page. Adobe Stock allows up to 49 keywords. Shutterstock needs 7 to 50. Alamy allows 50 tags, needs at least 5, and up to 10 of them can be supertags. Vecteezy needs 5 to 50 and allows no special characters. Agencies change these, so check the upload form if a number looks wrong.
Why is the order kept?
Adobe Stock says the first 10 keywords have the most influence on search ranking, and Alamy asks you to pick supertags by how central they are to the picture. The cleaner keeps your order, so put the main subject first. When a list is too long, the cut comes off the end.
What does it change for Vecteezy?
Vecteezy says titles and keywords cannot contain special characters. The cleaner folds accented letters to plain ones (café becomes cafe) and turns any other character into a space, so only letters, digits and spaces are left. Keywords that become the same after that are merged.
What is the editorial caption format?
Dreamstime says date and location are mandatory in editorial captions. The builder puts a line such as Atlanta, Georgia - October 2026: in front of your caption, which is the form my own editorial uploads use. The day is optional. Other agencies have their own editorial formats, so check theirs before you reuse the caption.
Does it suggest new keywords?
No. It only cleans and fits the keywords you give it. Suggesting keywords means looking at the photo, which is what the Mac app below is for.