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Participating Frequently
Oct 10, 2026 12:02 PM UTC
Question

Similar Content rejection — is this subject oversaturated on Adobe Stock?

Hello!

My vector illustration was rejected by Adobe Stock for Similar Content.

I searched Adobe Stock for similar vector illustrations and found only 1–2 works with a similar subject and around 21 illustrations of wooden bird feeders. Perhaps I am missing something or not searching correctly.

Could the rejection be related to similarities in style, composition, or individual elements compared with existing work? Or is this subject considered oversaturated even when there are so few similar illustrations?

I would appreciate your help in understanding the situation so I can better understand Adobe Stock’s review criteria and avoid spending hours creating illustrations that will ultimately be rejected.

 

    11 replies

    Participating Frequently
    Oct 15, 2026 7:58 PM UTC

    From my experience, rejections are not about meta data or because of similar content, the problem is that Adobe is using AI to reject a lot of designs blindly, I had a lot of totally designs while the colorways of my old patterns get accepted, there is no logic to those rejections, so all you can do is to submit your artwork to other platforms 

     

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    daniellei4510
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Oct 15, 2026 8:03 PM UTC

    Yes, AI is likely the culprit causing similar content rejections, but it most likely is relying heavily on titles, keywords, and the order of keywords to make those decisions. Hard to say, but I do know this: if I had decided not to send assets that I felt sure were going to get a similar content rejections, I’d probably have a hundred or more fewer assets in my portfolio. So the process is indeed pretty whack.

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    Adobe Community Expert | I have miles to go before I sleep, but I'm all done on this end.
    Nancy OShea
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Oct 10, 2026 6:12 PM UTC

    Did you use the click & drag similar search feature in Stock? 

    https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/web/search-for-assets/find-similar-assets.html

     

    This is what I found in keyword searches for bird+feeder and boy+girl+cartoon:

    https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=bird+feeder  85,000 results

    https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=boy+girl+cartoon  894,000 results

     

    Try changing your metadata around so the most common keywords are not on top.

     

     

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    Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
    MayaK1005Author
    Participating Frequently
    Oct 10, 2026 7:22 PM UTC

    Thank you for your suggestions. Yes, I used the Click & Drag Similar Search feature. It returned many photographs, but I found only three results showing a man and a boy making a bird feeder.

    The other two links show broad keyword search results dominated by photographs. My submission is a vector illustration, so these results do not seem to reflect the actual competition for similar vector artwork.

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    daniellei4510
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Oct 10, 2026 2:27 PM UTC

    I’ve amassed nearly 800 similar content rejections over the past year, so such rejections are something you’ll need to get used to. Do check your keywords and titles as suggested, but it’s also a good idea to submit rejected similar content assets (whether the are actually similar or not) to other stock sites with smaller databases.

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    Adobe Community Expert | I have miles to go before I sleep, but I'm all done on this end.
    MayaK1005Author
    Participating Frequently
    Oct 10, 2026 3:21 PM UTC

    That is a rather discouraging statistic. I also submit my work to other stock platforms, where my acceptance rate is 100% or close to it. At the moment, Adobe Stock is the only platform where I find the review process difficult to understand, as I keep receiving rejections that are hard to explain. From your experience, it seems I’m not the only contributor facing this issue.

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    yamato713108855
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Oct 10, 2026 12:44 PM UTC

    What title and keywords did you use when registering?

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    MayaK1005Author
    Participating Frequently
    Oct 10, 2026 2:13 PM UTC

    The title was: “Children building a wooden bird feeder with a hammer, isolated without a background for educational materials, school projects and nature-themed designs.”

    Keywords: bird feeder, children building bird feeder, wooden bird feeder, children, boy, girl, hammer, isolated, nature education, educational illustration, school project, bird care, craft project, childhood, learning, building, construction, nature activity.

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    yamato713108855
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Oct 12, 2026 1:31 PM UTC

    The keywords are currently written as sentences.
    (e.g., "birds," "children," "feeder," "build"...)
    Please register them as individual words.

    Make sure to include the words used in the title in your list of keywords.
    It is generally not advisable to express the title as multiple short sentences.

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