Question

Rejected Photos

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
December 27, 2025
6 replies
2533 views

Hi there,

I have recently joined Adobe Stock Contributor community and I got 4 out of 50 photos accepted, which is a decent approval ratio for a beginning. However, I am curious why 2 of these 4 photos got rejected:

Photos were rejected with this reason:
"Common issues that can impact the technical quality of images include exposure issues, soft focus, excessive filtering or artifacts/noise. "
There was no filtering other than regular cropping and photo editing in Lightroom.

ZALEZPHOTO

Inspiring

Congratulations on the great acceptance rate.

As you have experinece already, everyone has an opinion.

The main issue I see for rejection is the noise in your photos, which I suspect is the result of 640 ISO and perhaps too much sharppening in post. Why did you use tha ISO? If you used a tripod and use a 2 sec timer you could have used 1/30 sec, keep the same f stop and cut your ISO 2 stops less.
Are you using Adobe Photoshop? The denoising tool in camera raw is Great, and could make your rejected photos cross the finish line. If you can see my attachment you will see what I did to the noise with camera raw.

My other suspicion for rejection is the burnt pie... A buyer like a baker or restaurant may simply not want to convey that. With Adobe's AI tools you can also easily fix that in seconds.

Most people here will agree that the most difficult challenge for contributors is the sometines inconsistency in acceptance and rejections. In the end, it's the result of overwhelming number of submissions, and I suspect AI triggers flagging photos that are indeed very suitable for stock. I don't bother to ask anymore why a photo was rejected, if I feel very strongly against the rejection, I change someting even if minor and resubmit.

One big piece of advice, shoot video of as much as you can, it will add nicely to your earnings.

Cheers!

ZALEZPHOTO

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

One big piece of advice, shoot video of as much as you can...
By @ZALEZPHOTO

========

Blanket advice is useless. Many contributors don't have the requisite equipment, skills or software for making videos.

Better advice is to do what YOU do best. 😁

Submit only highest quality content.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

ZALEZPHOTO

Inspiring

Nancy, I know photographers who 25 years ago were in their 60's and decided they would never

try going digital. I bet today there're are photographers in their 60's saying they will never use AI tools for editing.

Did you know most cinematographers have roots in still photography?
Shooting video is a natural progression for any still photographer, and Every contributor shooting stock today already has the equipment to shoot great video, and AI tools capable of editing flawlessly.

Consider the Irony of saying my advice is a blanket statement. It's okay if you're not interested in shooting video or want to increase your income from stock...

but I assure you,

You don't know what you're missing!

Happy New Year!

ZALEZPHOTO

Ricky336

Community Expert

Hello,

You may well disagree, but the white balance is off. The picture is too yellow, as if it were taken under artificial light; it's too yellow!!

Something like this, I think, would be better.

Ricky336_1-1766927029102.png

Ricky336_2-1766927530949.png

White balance is a part of the quality rejection reasons!!

The composition could be better in these two shots as well.

However, this is just an opinion.

jacquelingphoto2017

Community Expert

Hi @nikola_3087 ,

Both files have similar issues. You could improve on the depth of field. The blur in the forefront is distracting.

They are both extremely noisy. It appears you tried to add sharpness in post processing, which adds noise to the edge of the files, plus the rest of the files are noisy.

You could increase exposure a little and reduce highlights in post processing to address the underexposure.

Zoom in at 100% to observe these flaws.

Please note:

There is no strict rule of third observance when taking photos for stock. You may apply the rule to some of your frames if you wish. However, there must be enough room around the subject for the customer to crop it from it's background and you must not crop the subject while taking the shot.

Best wishes

Jacquelin

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Quality & technical issues covers a wide list of factors. Any or all can impact an asset's suitability for commercial use.

White balance:

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/white-balance.html

Depth of field:

https://photographylife.com/what-is-depth-of-field

Hope that helps.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

daniellei4510

Community Expert

Composition is too tight. Give some room for the buyer to make their adjustments. Like cropping as tight as these are, or adding text, etc.

Adobe Community Expert | If you aren't submitting your assets in sRGB, you probably didn't read the rules.

Jill_C

Community Expert

4 out of 50 is NOT a good acceptance ratio. These 2 images are poorly composed, not completely in focus, and have a White Bakance issue in that they're too yellow,

Jill C., Forum Volunteer

N

nikola_3087Author

My bad my friend.... 4 out of 50 were REJECTED. 46 were accepted. Pardon me.

Thanks you for the remarks. Although composition is somewhat debatable, you can see rule of thirds being followed in 2nd picture (cream on top sits there; also you can split picture in half diagonally ), while 1st one dives into macro world, although we can agree that the composition may not the best.

In regards to your remarks on White Balance, the bread itself is strongly yellow, while you can clearly see parts of the plate in original white bellow. There are no white balanse issues, just artistic preference that image should go towards warmer tone.

And in regard to your remarks on focus.... It's clearly not "out of focus", just depends on what you prefer to be in focus. For me it is the part where cream starts melting in the 1st picture, and the 2nd one stays in focus for the most part actually.

I would accept 1st one was poorly composed because of focus in "wrong" place, but I really don't see either focus, white balance or composition problems with the 2nd one.

Once again, thanks the reply and remarks.

Jill_C

Community Expert

I am not on the moderation staff and cannot tell you exactly which flaw in the images caused them to push the reject button, but really it does no good to argue with me regarding why it was rejected. The images are also rather noisy, which is easily detectable when you zoom in. Any of these issues could have caused the rejection. As to composition, leave some breathing room around the edges of your frame. A Buyer can always crop in if needed, but they can't uncrop. Try to keep the Buyer's perspective and potential use for your images in mind.

Jill C., Forum Volunteer

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