quality problem

photos are rejected on Adobe which are accepted on Shutterstock and Getty without any problems...

By @kristofl40161323

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Apples to alligators.

Adobe Stock & Getty/Shutterstock have different customers with different expectations.

Underexposed, cluttered composition, focus issues. 

This is your competition on Adobe Stock:

https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=roses 13.4 MILLION results.

What Abambo said, plus cropping. The bottom seems a bit cut off.

Whatever you think, Adobe does not check if your assets have even been accepted by other databases. They do their own checking.

There are three possibilities for your increased refusal rates:

You are submitting more erronous assets.

Adobe gets better at detecting errors.

Adobe has increased its internal quality criteria.

Whatever it is, most of the quality refusals that we saw were rightfully rejected.

This said:

Flower pictures are abundantly present in the database. They get an especially hard check. Your picture has taken the hardest hurdle: it is sharp. But you will need to work on the exposure. The histogram shows some issues that need to be corrected.

I would then clean the defects in the flower to get a more perfect rose. We are not shooting for the National Geographic. A flower business buying your rose would prefer a perfect blossom to a real and natural one. (When taking such a picture, and if it is your rose, you can prepare the rose beforehand by chipping away bad leaves.)

Contrary to what @RALPH_L said, I would follow the golden ratio, which I think, your picture follows. However his other edits will make your picture stand out of the masses. That is, what is needed for you to sell this one.

First of all, as we have often said, a reference to other agencies is not relevant. Adobe demands quality assets. Did you look at your photos histogram?

1-- The majority of pixels are shuved to the left. That means underexposed.

2-- There are no whites showing. This is not neccesarily bad.

3-- The shadow flag indicates clipping. There are details missing in the shadows. Clipping is almost always a reason for rejection.

Also what composition rules did you follow?

With just a few corrections in Lightroom and Photoshop. I corrected the exposure. Note the correct histogram now! I blurred the background and sharpened the subject. I composed to the Rule of Thirds and moved the subject to a corner. This leaves room for the buyer to add text. 

Do you think this is better?