Trickle Reviews, Flood of Rejections: A Call for Transparency from Adobe Stock

[Massimo Ercolin]

Over the past months many contributors — myself included — have noticed a worrying shift in Adobe Stock’s review process. I routinely upload 7–8 assets per day, yet only about 1–3 of those are actually reviewed. At the same time, the rejection rate seems to have surged. When assets are rejected, the explanations we receive are often minimal, fragmented, and rarely helpful for improvement.

This isn’t just an inconvenience. It affects our livelihoods, our workflow, and the trust we place in a platform that many of us rely on. The review process is the backbone of the marketplace: it guarantees quality for buyers and predictable outcomes for contributors. When that process becomes opaque or inconsistent, the entire ecosystem suffers.

What contributors are experiencing
• Very low review throughput compared to uploads — long stretches where few or no assets are checked.
• A marked increase in rejections, sometimes for reasons that are vague or appear inconsistent with what is accepted in the public catalogue.
• Rejection messages that list a single, terse reason — often not the real problem — leaving creators unable to fix and resubmit effectively.
• A growing impression that automated filters are being relied on more heavily, or that manual review resources have been reduced.

Why this matters
Transparency and actionable feedback are fundamental. If rejections are to be more frequent, contributors need clear, specific guidance they can use to improve. Equally, Adobe must ensure the review process is consistent so contributors can trust that accepted assets reflect stable standards — not random or contradictory decisions.

What we’re asking Adobe Stock to do

1. Share basic review metrics: what percentage of uploads are actually reviewed daily, and how has this changed over recent months?

2. Provide clearer rejection feedback: when an asset is rejected, give at least two concrete points (e.g., excessive noise, AI artifacts, composition/focus issues) that the contributor can act on.

3. Improve dispute/appeal clarity: make it easier to request a human review and receive a meaningful response when an automated or unclear rejection happens.

4. Explain how automated tools are used: clarify when AI/automated filters are applied and what known false positives are being addressed.

How contributors can help
If you’ve experienced the same issues, please document it. Collect: upload dates and times, number of files uploaded, number reviewed, rejection messages (screenshots or copies), and the asset IDs or filenames. Patterns and numbers will make this concern harder to dismiss and will allow collective, evidence-based requests for clarification.

Closing
We all want Adobe Stock to be a reliable, fair marketplace — one that supports creators and delivers quality to buyers. Right now, the community needs transparency, consistent moderation standards, and more constructive feedback. We’re raising these concerns not to attack the platform, but to protect the trust that makes it valuable to everyone. Adobe: please give us clarity and a path forward — not just automated rejections and silence.

[Jill_C]

If you had spent any time at all in this forum or the Discord channel, you would have learned that all of these complaints have been discussed vigorously and relentlessly since earlier this year when Adobe apparently implemented an at least partially AI-driven review process which has resulted in increased rejections, many of which are unjustified. Adobe has remained essentially silent on any internal process changes, and have provided no avenue for any of Contributors to discuss the changes. You will not receive any replies from Adobe here in this forum. If they do happen to monitor this forum, they do not respond. 

[Massimo Ercolin]

I find that the situation has gotten even worse in recent days; at least until not long ago, more images were being reviewed and with positive outcomes. I believe Adobe Stock’s frantic attempt to cut costs is actually ruining them

[Jill_C]

This doesn't appear to be a cost-cutting move. If that's what they wanted to do, they would reduce their reviewing staff considerably, reduce the Contributor weekly submission limit and let review queues grow, causing Contributors to wait a much longer time, as we did early in the AI boom when Adobe first started allowing AI submissions. I think they are genuinely interested in reducing duplications and similars in the database based on Buyer input; however their current approach doesn't seem to be achieving that goal with any degree of accuracy .

[Jill_C]

It would be more effective to reduce the weekly submission limit considerably so that every Contributor focuses on submitting only their best work.

[daniellei4510]

Good luck with this. 🙂 You basically just consolidated in a single post what has been previously discussed ad nauseam.

[Yan39036685vgrz]

I think Adobe’s move is basically a reaction to what contributors have been doing lately. A lot of people are uploading AI-generated stuff—especially images and photos—in huge batches. Even the descriptions and keywords are often auto-filled using AI. This kind of workflow is super common now, and the bots or automation tools are being sold openly. I guess Adobe’s just overwhelmed. Personally, I feel like they should pause new contributor sign-ups for a while.

[daniellei4510]

Safeguards have been put into place to slow the bulk submission of AI assets. I'm sure there are new contributors who have a stockpile of AI assets that they would like to have reviewed, but we're seeing posts the likes of someone waiting for 500 assets to be reviewed and wondering why only a small handful were moderated while most sit for days before another sweep is made. 

[RALPH_L]

I disagree. In September I submitted 85 photos and about 10% were rejected. "similar content" and "quality". Quality issues were corrected and resubmitted. All those with "quality" rejections were then accepted. Similar content rejections were left alone. It is important to submit quality, do not submit to an over filled genre, vary your subjects and genres  and keep titles and keywords unique.