Inspiring

Answered

Hey Adobe, My 35mm Negatives Aren’t AI — But Your Moderation Might Be!

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
October 4, 2025
7 replies
2823 views

I’ve got a couple of gripes with Adobe that have been driving me up the wall. First off, they’ve scattered their support and community pages across the internet like breadcrumbs in a forest. By the time you click through all the forums, subforums, help centers, and “contact us” pages, half your day is gone and you still haven’t found the one place that might actually help.

But my real frustration is with their stock contributor reviews lately. I recently dusted off my old film camera hobby — you know, the real kind, with rolls of film, chemicals, and the smell of fixer in the darkroom — and started uploading scanned photos. And what do I get? Rejected. Over and over. Apparently, I “missed the generative AI flag.” Excuse me? These are film photos, not pixels born in a machine’s imagination. How are they deciding these are AI-generated — tarot cards? Tea leaves? And while we’re at it, could someone explain why every rejection seems to come from a moderator who thinks a Nikon from 1985 is secretly ChatGPT with a lens?

Contributors

Correct answer Abambo

What you are speaking of is consumer over the counter scanners, that are mostly design for scanning prints and docs.

But you are 100% wrong to generalize, and that is not an opinion.

A Fuji Frontier scanner from 20 years ago can still create unbelievable beautiful scans from transparency film, and a drum scanner the same age even a better.

Ofcourse there's a quality difference, which is why I recommend anyone uploading high quality scans, to include the image was shot on film under the aset description.

Of the two samples I'm sharing, the one with the sun behind the cotrol tower was shot on fuji Velvia, it got accepted on the fourth try... the other one was shot from the world trade center north tower... I gave up submitting after multiple rejections.

I remind everyone... you're all entitled to your opinion, not to your own set of facts!

What you are speaking of is consumer over the counter scanners, that are mostly design for scanning prints and docs.

But you are 100% wrong to generalize, and that is not an opinion.

By @ZALEZPHOTO

You did not read: “highest quality scanner”! That's not a consumer scanner. And I have used drum scanners about thirty years ago, to scan highly professional pictures taken with highly professional film cameras at that time. I'm a professional. I know what I'm talking about.

Of the two samples I'm sharing, the one with the sun behind the cotrol tower was shot on fuji Velvia, it got accepted on the fourth try... the other one was shot from the world trade center north tower... I gave up submitting after multiple rejections.

I remind everyone... you're all entitled to your opinion, not to your own set of facts!

By @ZALEZPHOTO

The two samples submitted here should have been clearly refused for quality reasons. That's a fact, not an opinion. The fourth time, you just had a moderator who was not doing their job correctly. That happens if you try hard enough.

Ricky336

Community Expert

The major thing to remember—most people forget about this—is that Adobe Stock is commercial. And the 21st century. Images have to be clean, 'clinical'. A lot of images that are used are current and used for a specific purpose, 'here today, gone tomorrow' idea.

Unless you have a top-notch film/Transparency scanner, I wouldn't bother.

As technology moves on, even digital photos in a commercial setting will become obsolete. AI is the future!

The writing is on the wall!

Abambo

Community Expert

Unless you have a top-notch film/Transparency scanner, I wouldn't bother.

By @Ricky336

Well, the scanner can scan only what is on film. And the film look is not clean… as required in our today's digital setting. For websites, they are probably good enough. For print too, and for billboards too. I've used terrible quality pictures for roll-ups or photographic walls in an exposition booth. The average visitor did not see the issues. They didn't care.

But customers (or Adobe) expect really clean, high-resolution pictures, and that can't be done on film.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Ricky336

Community Expert

Unless you have a top-notch film/Transparency scanner, I wouldn't bother.

By @Ricky336

Well, the scanner can scan only what is on film. And the film look is not clean…

By @Abambo

And therein lies the problem!

Instrumental

Inspiring

Adobe hardly accepts film scans... I once tried uploading my high quality scans (35mm and polaroids) made via Epson photo scanner. All of them were rejected for quality issues. I tried no more since then.

Abambo

Community Expert

The issue is not the scans. You can use the highest quality scanner, and it won't work, as the source simply does not meet the current quality requirements. You are about 15 to 20 years late for this.

This does not mean that your pictures are bad, it only means that they are not as clean as pictures out of a modern camera. That's all.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

ZALEZPHOTO

Inspiring

What you are speaking of is consumer over the counter scanners, that are mostly design for scanning prints and docs.

But you are 100% wrong to generalize, and that is not an opinion.

A Fuji Frontier scanner from 20 years ago can still create unbelievable beautiful scans from transparency film, and a drum scanner the same age even a better.

Ofcourse there's a quality difference, which is why I recommend anyone uploading high quality scans, to include the image was shot on film under the aset description.

Of the two samples I'm sharing, the one with the sun behind the cotrol tower was shot on fuji Velvia, it got accepted on the fourth try... the other one was shot from the world trade center north tower... I gave up submitting after multiple rejections.

I remind everyone... you're all entitled to your opinion, not to your own set of facts!

ZALEZPHOTO

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

We are not chatbots. Just unpaid forum volunteers & fellow product users like yourself. 😁

Adobe Stock reviewers are not bots, either. They are randomly assigned humans tasked with examining thousands of submissions each week. They're too busy to lurk in community forums or reply to unhappy contributor complaints. So they don't.

That said, I gave up submitting 35mm film b/c the technical quality from a scan just isn't good enough for professional use. The details are lost, colors are faded and even after painstaking editing in Photoshop, photo scans are rarely accepted by Stock. Best advice, don't waste your time with film. Save it for personal use.

Before submitting, always compare your best work with current Stock inventory to see if yours is as good or better than what Stock is selling now. Read your Contributor User Guide for more tips.

Hope that helps.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

Abambo

Community Expert

We are not chatbots. Just unpaid forum volunteers & fellow product users like yourself. 😁

By @Nancy OShea

Years ago, the rumour was running that Mat Hayward would be a bot. He vehemently denied this rumour. At that time Mat was occasionaly participating in discussions. But today, probably because of our professional and highly qualified answers 😜 that we give for free, they decided, that they do not need to intervene, even if we would love to get, from time to time, a clarifying word about this or that topic.

What I've learned from my presence here is that moderators do follow the Adobe instructions for moderation, and that they err from time to time (since Adobe allowed generative AI, the moderation quality has gone down, and they err more often, very often in favour of the contributor and against the interests of the customer). But in all circumstances, moderators do not have the time to think about what they like personally when they are moderating. There is absolutely no personal input from them. Refusals are codifyied, and they probably even never read the text that I got sent.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Abambo

Community Expert

By the time you click through all the forums, subforums, help centers, and “contact us” pages, half your day is gone and you still haven’t found the one place that might actually help.
By @jia1674

Contributors (as contributors) aren't customers, the are suppliers. There is no universal right to be a Adobe supplier. This said, it is very probable that the moderator did select the wromng refusal reason. Old scanned film based pictures do normally not meet the clean digital needs. In our today's world, they will be considers as noisy and not sharp. Helmut Newton and Edward Steichen would get their wole collection of picture refused, as of today's standards.

If you're getting the AI refusal for non-AI assets, the rcommended path is to generate a property release and state in that release that you are the creator, and that they are not generative AI. There is nothing more that can be done in this case, except trying the really difficult path to contributor support: https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/Need-Help-Contact-Us.html

(BTW: this isn't Adobe, but we are fellow contributors here. Adobe is not present here, except in very rare cases... )

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Jill_C

Community Expert

There have been numerous reports here about film scans being rejected, usually for quality issues. It's challenging for film scans to meet the current quality standards of digital photography. Obviously, the rejection reason provided was in error. If you care to upload a few if the rejects here we can suggest the possible reasons for rejection.

Jill C., Forum Volunteer

J

jia1674Author

Inspiring

Here’s a typical example of one of my scanned film photos — it gets slapped with the dreaded “missing generative AI flag” label just like many others I uploaded..

Jill_C

Community Expert

It certainly doesn't look like an AI image to me, but I do think it's a bit overexposed and noisy, so a quality rejection might have been warranted.

Jill C., Forum Volunteer

ZALEZPHOTO

Inspiring

You're a very good writer, and your message worth praising 🙂

I'm still new here, when I started I submitted a bunch of color transparencies of some of my best shots, and most were rejected for same reasons as yours... what I suggest is that you include shot on film on your photos descriptions, it helped me on a handful of my shots.

Dont get discouraged, and next time share some of your photos with us, keeping in mind opinions are like...

belly buttons... everyone has one :)))

cheers!

ZALEZPHOTO

daniellei4510

Community Expert

Are they black and white images? That doesn't make Adobe's reason for rejection the proper one, but black and white assets are difficult to get approved by the moderators.

Adobe Community Expert | If you can't fix it, hide it; if you can't hide it, delete it.

J

jia1674Author

Inspiring

Most of my uploads are in color, with just a few in classic black and white, but lately it hasn’t mattered — Adobe rejects all of them without fail. I honestly have no clue what they’re basing those decisions on. Maybe it’s because there’s no camera info in the metadata, or maybe their algorithm panics the moment it sees a scanned image and assumes it’s machine-made. Just my two cents, but whatever system they’re using isn’t doing me any favors. It’s almost like their AI detection tool needs its own pair of glasses — because it clearly can’t tell the difference between a hand-developed film shot and a prompt-spawned fake.

Abambo

Community Expert

Maybe it’s because there’s no camera info in the metadata,

By @jia1674

No, you can submit assets with the exif data stripped, and they will pass.

or maybe their algorithm panics the moment it sees a scanned image and assumes it’s machine-made.

By @jia1674

No, the decision is taken by human moderators, and they are checking assets in a very fast pace. If someone is refusing the assets, and they select the wrong reason (ie AI generated instead of quality, it's refused for a reason, but the indicated reason is not the right one).

It’s almost like their AI detection tool needs its own pair of glasses — because it clearly can’t tell the difference between a hand-developed film shot and a prompt-spawned fake.

By @jia1674

Film shots are probably all having quality issues. At least all my pictures, even when scanned with the most expensive drum scanners are all exposing film noise and are unsharp, if pixel peeped, evne if they are taken with highly professional middle format cameras of their time. They call it progress...

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

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