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Editorial Caption Generator
An editorial clip on Shutterstock or Pond5 opens its description with a dateline: where and when it was filmed. Enter the city, the country and the day you filmed, and copy the line each agency asks for. Adobe Stock needs none, because it takes no editorial footage.
In English, as the marketplaces show it. The date is never filled in for you.
Still needed: city, country, the day you filmed.
Adobe Stock
No dateline: Adobe “doesn’t accept traditional editorial content at this time”, and its illustrative editorial category lists photos, illustrations and vectors, with no video type.
Illustrative editorial content overview (opens in a new tab), updated 2026-06-11, read 2026-10-29
Two agencies, two date orders
Shutterstock’s help page "How do I submit editorial content?" (updated February 18, 2026) gives the format as "CITY, STATE/COUNTRY – MONTH DAY, YEAR: Factual sentence that describes the content’s subject matter." So a clip filmed in Vienna on October 21, 2026 opens "Vienna, Austria – October 21, 2026: ", with an en dash, the month spelled out, a comma before the year and a colon before the sentence.
Pond5’s Legal Guidelines (last modified August 25, 2025) put the year first. Its template reads "CITY, COUNTRY (STATE) – YEAR/MONTH/DAY:", but the example right under it is "New York, USA – 2024, Nov 5:". The two do not agree, and no Pond5 page says which one review expects. The generator writes the example’s form, year, abbreviated month, day, which is also the form our own Pond5 uploads use.
Adobe Stock says on its illustrative editorial page (updated June 11, 2026) that it "doesn’t accept traditional editorial content at this time", and its illustrative editorial category lists requirements for photos, illustrations and vectors, with no video type. An Adobe clip has no dateline to write.
How it works, and what it will not do
The date is the one you enter, never today’s and never a guess: without a real calendar day there is no caption. City and country are written as you type them, so type them in English, the language every marketplace shows. The output ends with a space, ready for the factual sentence that follows.
Shutterstock’s own example on the same page is written differently from its template, with hyphens and "January 28th 2020". We follow the template, which is the instruction; the example is shown under the generator so you can compare.
Quick tips
- Write the factual sentence after the dateline yourself: who, what, and what is happening, without opinion.
- Do not repeat the city and country in the sentence that follows: the dateline already says where.
- Shutterstock needs press credentials for some editorial subjects, such as historical reenactments and sporting events, non-professional ones included. A correct dateline does not replace them.
Limits
What this tool cannot check
- It writes the dateline only. Whether a clip may go editorial at all, and with which credentials, is the agency’s call.
- It does not add a state or province: both templates mention one, neither agency’s example uses one. Add it by hand if your subject needs it.
- Getty Images is not covered: we found no public Getty page stating an editorial caption format, and we publish only what we could read.
Frequently asked questions
CITY, STATE/COUNTRY – MONTH DAY, YEAR: followed by a factual sentence, as stated on Shutterstock’s help page "How do I submit editorial content?" (updated February 18, 2026). For example: Vienna, Austria – October 21, 2026: Visitors walk through the palace gardens.
Pond5’s Legal Guidelines give the example "New York, USA – 2024, Nov 5:", year first, then the abbreviated month and the day. Its written template says YEAR/MONTH/DAY instead; the generator follows the example.
No. Adobe says it does not accept traditional editorial content, and its illustrative editorial category lists photos, illustrations and vectors, with no video type.
Because the dateline states when the footage was filmed. A wrong date is a false statement in an editorial caption, so the date is always yours to enter.