Too much noise or post-processing?

To look for noise sharpness and artifacts one need to zoom to 100% or more. It is expected that contributors use the noise reduction tool of an editing app such as Photoshop to reduce noise before submitting. In which case the colors of your images becomes smooth and not grainy, blotchy or with artificial coloring, or fringing.

Best wishes

JG

I don't see noise, but I do see sensor dust or lens spots (directly above the top plane). At this size, it appears that the focus isn't sharp enough, and that may be the real reason it has been rejected.

I don't know how the images are evaluated, but I envision someone sitting in a dark room, spending about 5 seconds looking at an image, then pushing the "Accept" button or one of the various "reject" buttons available to them. I'm getting about a third of my images rejected. In some cases when I submit a series of images all taken with the exact same lighting and set-up, 1 is accepted and others are rejected for "noise". There doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency in the selection process.

Same thing with this picture as well