Professional Photography: Importance of Specialized Evaluation Criteria

Your concern highlights a vital issue that goes beyond photography—it’s about respect for expertise and the integrity of branding. When reviewers mislabel meticulously crafted images as "over-filtered," it undermines the artistry and technical skills that define a photographer's brand. For corporations like Adobe, this poses a broader risk: alienating the very creatives who drive their platform's value.

(...) are marked as low quality due to 'overuse of filters.' (...)

By @peredv

The refusal reason states quality issues. The rest is stock text, that may or may not apply to your picture. There is indeed no indication why exactly a picture gets refused, and how many errors a picture has. The moderator refuses at the sight of the first error they see.

The image moderators are certainly not perfect, but from time to time, I think, a little more modesty of the contributors is probably appropriate. And by the way: many works of good and professional photographers would be rejected here because they do not meet the required criteria. A rejection is not always an evaluation of the work itself, but a statement as to whether this image fits into the collection. As a landlord, Adobe has the house right, and can reject images as they like. There is no right of acceptance here.

I don't think it's possible to know that "overuse of filters" is the specific reason for which the image was rejected. Adobe doesn't care about the difficulty of acquiring an image, nor the skill level required. They are focused on commercial appeal. 

Let us see an example.

One thing to bear in mind, is that Adobe Stock is a commercial business, meaning that the images in stock have a specific target audience; images that show a concept do well. I am not sure how photos in 'extreme' conditions would fare. 

Perhaps you could post an example of a photo in extreme conditions that didn't pass due to 'overuse of filters' - which can cause artefacts - hence the quality rejection reason.

'Achieved through advanced photographic techniques' is also ambiguous. 

"Excessive filtering" is just one reason among many when an image is rejected for quality issues. Why do you feel the overuse of filters specifically is one of them?