Question about rejection reasons for astrophotography images

Hello,

I wanted to sincerely thank you for the valuable feedback you gave me on my astrophotography submissions. Based on your advice regarding adding more blacks, adjusting contrast, and handling noise reduction carefully, I reprocessed my images and resubmitted them.

I am happy to share that this time, my photos were successfully accepted by Adobe Stock. Your detailed suggestions about post-processing, and your encouragement, really helped me improve the presentation of my work.

I truly appreciate your time and generosity in sharing your knowledge. Thank you again for guiding me in the right direction.

Best regards,

Yukihiro Iyama

Thank you for your question. Regarding the rejection reason, Adobe Stock indicated that there were technical quality issues, such as exposure problems and noise. Taking advice from others into account, I plan to review and improve background noise, chroma noise, and tonal representation to create higher-quality images in the future.

Thank you for pointing this out. I understand now that my images also show chromatic noise, especially in the darker regions. Since astrophotography often requires heavy stretching, it’s easy to introduce color noise, but I see that this is not acceptable for Stock submissions.

I will reprocess my files with stronger chrominance noise reduction (using tools like Lightroom color noise reduction, etc.) and ensure that the background looks clean and smooth while keeping the nebula details intact. Hopefully this will bring the images closer to commercial quality standards.

Thanks again for your valuable feedback.

Thank you for pointing this out. I understand now that in the Stock marketplace, astrophotography is competing not only with images from enthusiasts, but also with stunning imagery sourced from NASA, Hubble, JWST, and other major observatories.

Since Adobe Stock customers are primarily looking for commercial-quality content (ads, packaging, merchandise, calendars, etc.), I realize that my submissions need to be processed and presented in a way that makes them visually striking and commercially usable, not just scientifically accurate.

I will reprocess and curate my images with this in mind — avoiding pure black clipping, enhancing colors and composition, and leaving space for design elements. Hopefully this approach will make my astrophotography more suitable for Stock.

Thanks again for your valuable feedback.

Thank you for your reply. As you pointed out, in the second photo, some details are lost in the pure black areas due to the dark nebula. In astrophotography, black regions are naturally present in dark nebulae and deep space, so I am considering how to preserve details without creating pure black clipping. I will study other Adobe Stock works to learn how to handle this better.

Thank you for the feedback. I understand now that the rejection may be related to clipped blacks in the histogram. Since these are astrophotography images, I tried to keep the background dark to emphasize the nebula and stars, but I see that having pure black values can cause loss of details for stock requirements.

I will reprocess the images to slightly lift the shadows and avoid pure black or pure white clipping. Hopefully this will make them more suitable for Adobe Stock submission.

Thank you again for your helpful advice.