Image, above ID#: 85172263
Adobe Stock provides access to millions of high-quality, royalty-free images, videos, audio, design templates, and 3D assets—plus our Premium photography collection—for all your creative needs. Review these helpful search tips to find the right assets quickly and efficiently for your next project.
Quick Links
But Who's Counting?
Adobe Stock contains more than 350 million assets in our collection. This number continues to grow exponentially each month. As a photographer and Adobe Stock contributor, I'm proud to be part of that ever-increasing collection of high-quality content.
Let's face it, though; a significant collection of fresh, new assets doesn't mean much if you can't find what you're looking for - and find it quickly. A critical factor in design projects - whether it's for a client or for a class project - is the time spent finding or creating the assets for that project.
In my time as a Solutions Consultant for Adobe Stock, one of the many things I've learned is that our stock service does things differently. We are heavily invested in the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (we call it Adobe Sensei) to efficiently assist customers in their search for the right asset. And while this is great, it does mean a change in muscle memory, compared to how one might have searched for content on other stock sites.
Image, left: ID# 196886913
Finding What You Want
This article will identify the various ways you can speed up your search for the perfect image, using Adobe Stock. We'll look at each of the following:
- Curated Collections
- Visual Search
- Undiscovered Content
- Standard Content vs Premium and Video
- AI-Generated content
- Local Artists
- Aesthetic Filters
- Copy Space and Isolation Filters
- Conceptual and Real Life Keywords
- Find Similar Content
- Contributor Portfolios
- Boolean Searches
Image, right: ID# 192865923
Are you ready? Let's go!
Deep Dive into Search
Curated Collections
Not sure where to start? You'll see Curated Collections on the main page of every asset category:
- Images - https://stock.adobe.com/images
- Video - https://stock.adobe.com/video
- Templates - https://stock.adobe.com/templates
- 3D - https://stock.adobe.com/3d-assets
- Premium - https://stock.adobe.com/premium
- Audio - https://stock.adobe.com/ca/audio
- Free - https://stock.adobe.com/ca/free
Our dedicated, highly-trained curators are continuously adding new collections to the Adobe Stock web site, including popular, seasonal, trending, and lifestyle content for easy browsing and inspiration.
Main image ID#: 116671774 ------>
Visual Search & Find SImilar
Sometimes, keywords just aren't enough. Maybe you've seen an image online somewhere - maybe you even took a photo yourself - and wished you could find something just like it that you could use in an upcoming design or campaign without worrying about copyright or model releases.
You can use that image to perform a Find Similar Search! This allows you to find content that is visually similar to your image, video footage or audibly similar to an audio clip.
You have three options to initiate the search:
- Drag and drop an image into the search bar from your desktop
- Select the search icon attached to the search bar button to browse for and upload your image file.
- Click and drag an image from existing Adobe Stock search results.
- Find Similar also works for our audio content!
Find Similar Audio Clips
While searching for audio, you have many options to refine your results, just like with photos and video, but you also can also upload a snippet of existing audio - from 3 - 20 seconds - to get you closer to your desired sound.
Once you have results, you can further fine-tune your options by selecting a Mood, Genre, Tempo and Instruments.
Finding Images from Other Sources
Whether you start your search with a Find Similar search or with keywords, you can apply additional keywords or filters to further refine your results.
Pro-Tip 1: Changing the sort by to Relevance is a great way to find something you’ve already seen somewhere else and want to find on our site.
Pro-Tip 2: Changing the sort by to Featured returns results that are new, fresh and on-trend with your existing search.
Main image ID# 58913545 ------>
The Filter Panel is Your Friend
By default, the Filter panel on the left side of the Stock website is hidden. After your first search, click on the View Panel button or the Filters icon to expand the panel. A lot of your options for finding the right image quickly are in this panel. I'll point out many of these options in this article.
Pro Tip: The Filter panel is also context-sensitive; your filter options will change depending on the content type you are searching for (e.g. images vs video, or video vs audio).
Standard Content vs Premium and Video
If you want to limit your search to CCE Pro (All Apps Pro) content, lower cost or single-credit assets, you can apply the Standard Content filter. Standard Content represents a large majority of the assets on Adobe Stock, so there will be a lot of content to choose from. You will also find more than 45K video clips in our FREE category.
Pro Tip: Creative Cloud Professional (an enterprise-only offering) gives customers unlimited access to all of the Adobe Stock standard content (more than 300M images, vectors, illustrations and templates). You can narrow your search to what is included in your plan by selecting the appropriate content type when searching.
All other assets, including Premium collection images, Audio and HD/4K videos, are accessible with the Premium and Video filter option.
Pro Tip: Reduce the "cheese" factor in your image search results, and get more "non-stock-like" content in a standard image search by first limiting the search to Premium image content. Find an image you like in the Premium content and use it as the subject of Find Similar search, and then switch to Standard content.
Main image ID#: 212352434
Sensei-Powered Filtering
Aesthetic & Content Filters
Adobe’s decades of experience in creativity and data science gave rise to Adobe’s artificial intelligence (AI), the Sensei neural network. Sensei is interwoven throughout Adobe tools, from creative desktop and cloud tools and services, to document processing and our digital marketing services.
In Adobe Stock, Sensei goes far beyond keywords, examining millions of images at the pixel level, to learn about the content and intent of the visual image itself, enabling it to make spot-on recommendations when you search for assets. Aesthetic and content filters use Adobe Sensei to empower your search based on an image’s aesthetic characteristics, such as focus and color or image content.
The Stock search team works closely with the Sensei team on research projects that often end up becoming new tools for customers over time.
Search Undiscovered
A challenge with microstock can be feeling confident your image choices are unique. Enabling the Undiscovered Content filter could help you quickly find the right image and one that no one else has licensed through Adobe Stock.
Depth of Field
Depth of Field is a photographic term, meaning, the area of apparent sharpness in an image, from front to back.
Using a sliding scale, the Depth of Field aesthetic filter allows you to narrow your search images with sharp focus extended throughout the image (think - landscape photo) or images with one sharply focused subject with blurred foreground and/or background (think - fashion photography or close up photography).
Vivid Color
Using a sliding scale, the Vivid Color aesthetic filter allows you to narrow your search results based on color saturation. The slider enables you to choose lower or higher color intensity.
Copy Space Filter
Using the Copy Space content filter, you can further alter your search by specifying whether the assets you need require room for other design elements, such as text, logos or or other images.
Note: All the images used in this article are from Adobe Stock, and several of them were found using the Copy Space filter.
Background Filter
If your goal is to find images that can be easily masked so they can be dropped into other backgrounds, you can also filter for isolated images. You can choose to show only or exclude isolated imagery from the search results.
Generative AI (NEW in 2023)
Images created with AI tools are all the rage these days and Adobe Stock has an extensive collection of this content type (12M+ and growing), supplied by our global contributor base. All submissions are moderated and curated to our usual exacting standards for quality and commercial purposes.
Along with this new type of content, we've enabled you to filter specifically for Gen-AI content or to exclude it from your search results.
Icon Filter (NEW in 2023)
There are nearly 100,000 icon sheets in the Adobe Stock collection, covering every topic imaginable. And you can filter just for those nifty UI components using the Icon filter.
Usage Rights
Within the main collection, is a subcategory called Illustrative Editorial. This type of asset would include imagery with obvious branding such as store signs, logos, etc, that are not necessarily current news but, but could be used to help illustrate a concept or theme. Perhaps there is a feature article talking about the increase in the number of coffee shops in the downtown core. An illustrative editorial image showing a concentration of different coffee shops with obvious signage, could assist with this article.
You may use content marked "Editorial use only" solely in publications about current events, newsworthy topics, or other items of public interest. No commercial or advertising use is permitted and all assets must have credit assigned. Slight cropping or resizing permitted, but no other modifications except for technical quality is permitted. Do not misrepresent the source or use to imply any third party endorsement. To learn more, see Editorial Restrictions.
Examples of when to use Editorial Content
- News articles
- Non-fiction books
- Documentaries
- Non-Commercial Blogs
By default, this type of asset is displayed in any general content search, but you can filter out those images using the Usage Rights
Size Filter
The Size Filter allows you to set a minimum pixel dimension or megapixel resolution, which can further narrow down your search results.
Pssst.... if you want to impress your friends, toss around the phrase "Semantic Image Segmentation." It's one of the ways Adobe Sensei learns about the actual image content itself, rather than just relying on keywords and search terms.
Main image ID#: 64824298
The Key to Keywords
Keyword searches are still important, especially when it comes to narrowing down your results. But thanks to Sensei, your keywords don't have to accurately describe a literal scene; they could be used to add context.
Conceptual
Adobe Stock is continually analyzing assets to understand how they relate to trends, topics, and themes. Sometimes, what you're looking for is an asset that embodies a mood, emotion or concept, rather than a straight-forward description like, "man standing on mountain". If that's the case, try using conceptual keywords in your search, like happy, alone, thoughtful, love....
Authentic
Similar to conceptual keywords, "authentic" or "real-life" keywords can help narrow your results. Try using words like "candid" with other keywords to find less posed, formal imagery.
Boolean
When using keywords to search, the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT can be used in the search bar to limit the results of a search. Connect words in various combinations to expand or focus results.
Pro-Tip: You can also combine keywords with a Visual Search to really fine-tune the results of your search.
Pro-Tip #2: Did you know, you can even start your search on Google? Simply type in a keyword and include "adobe stock" to focus your results on content from the Adobe Stock web site.
Main image ID#: 243667504
Keywords & Find Similar - A powerful combination
If you have narrowed down your results with keywords and other filters, you may find yourself on the right track, but still need to focus your search results further. Let Adobe Sensei help you with our Find Similar options.
Search for images that are similar in look and feel to those you’ve already selected by clicking the Find Similar icon (camera) on the image, or by clicking on an image for a larger preview.
If you find something closer to what you're looking for in this manner, you can then set that newer image as the target of your visual search, even further refining your results.
Search by Object
When you choose to Find Similar from the Adobe Stock collection, rather than uploading an image, you can fine-tune the result using Search by Object. Your new source image will show a range of white dots. Click on any dot to search for that particular object.
Find More
When you click on an image for a larger preview, you can also select More from This Series or More from This Model.
Main image ID#: 121830804
Contributor Portfolios
Do you like the work of a certain contributor? Simply click their profile name (in blue), found in the image details, to go right to their own Adobe Stock asset gallery.
Pro-Tip: If you find suddenly that your results are not what you're expecting, you can quickly clear your search settings by clicking on the Stock logo at the upper left corner of the website. This will reset all search parameters to their defaults, and take you back to the home page.
Contributor Search
You can search for specific agency creative collections (such as Stocksy, GoPro, Twenty20, Hero Images, etc). Simply run a search with the ‘Agency Name’ on the Adobe Stock website. The search results will include a link to the contributor page.
Main image ID#: 85752000
The Wrap Up
The Search is Never Really Over...
And there you have it. Well, there you have it for now, at least; Sensei is constantly improving and learning more, so your search options will no doubt increase over time and become even more accurate.
I hope you can see that by making some small changes to how you look for stock content, you can find what you need much faster when using Adobe Stock.
What would YOU like to learn about Adobe Stock? Drop me a line and let me know.
Main image ID#: 122519533