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markb28653345
Participant
August 9, 2022
Question

Why are moderators assessing images at 72 dpi?

  • August 9, 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 818 views

Why are moderators assessing images sent to them at 300dpi; but at 72dpi, then rejecting the image because of artifacting issues? instead of moderating the supplied uncompressed 300dpi image which several other companies who deal stock photography always do; who have immediately accepted every image I have offered them, including being accepted for both standard and exclusive advertising licences, but the same images which are accepted by every other Stock photography company, has been rejected by Adobe Stock on the grounds of artifacting?


300dpi is the native resolution that my camera has taken the image. I have post processed the image at 300dpi, and thus following the technical rules laid down by Adobe Stock in their technical manual and assessing the image at a minimum of 100% magnification, all the way up to 500% + magnification in some cases, with no artifacting issues on all images prior to being supplied for moderation by Adobe Stock this is regardless if I am providing standard colour, standard Monochrome, HDR, Focus Stacked, or IR images.


It is becoming very apparent that there is a clear bias to the photography and educated background in photography that some Adobe Moderators are rigging the assessment of images, to an extreme low resolution purposely generating artifacting issues on some photographer’s images, but assessing full native resolution, in favour of some photographers. where I have licenced several images which have been of poor quality, failing my own quality control, that even some my clients who have no photographic background and knowledge are spotting clear errors with some stock supplied images making them unusable for projects. Ranging from manipulated dpi to ensure that a mobile image taken below 150dpi meets the 300dpi threshold for assessment, but is not suitable for project transforming processes in higher resolution images but clearly advertised at 300dpi, images which have had very poorly selected subjects and cut from one image placed into several others with the process repeated several times leaving the image unusable for actual projects because of the several outlines built up around the subject, and breaking a fundamental rule of providing stock photography which is "the image should be in an as much as shot form as possible with minimal post processing in raw, and some shake reduction / straightening is permitted during the post process", but again the image is moderated as being good for Adobe Stock to even some images which have managed to get through moderation where the model has bruising and track marks on their person which has been poorly masked by the originator! (this is just some of the issue I have found in my use of the platform)


So, the question needs to be asked, who is right in moderating images for a Stock platform? The half dozen or so companies out there, who offer a better and more streamlined service than Adobe in stock photography, who moderate and present images at uncompressed 300dpi, give the amateur photographer the kudos for taking a good picture and is given a seat at the big boy table with the university trained professional photographers, or Adobe's platform team of university trained / university student / AI moderation team who transform the resolution from uncompressed 300dpi to an extremely compressed 72dpi thus purposely causing artifacting in the image as Adobe PS, LR, RAW, then needs to generate pixels and a ton of noise when being viewed at over 150% magnification, thus purposely generating a reason to rejecting the image to keep the amount of stock images on the site in favour of themselves and their friends.


Following this recent rejection on some very good IR photography (which was rejected because of heavy artifacting which I am not surprised when it has been shrunk from 24.3Mpix at 300dpi to 0.5Mpix at 72dpi I am actually supprised an image could have been made out other than a couple of square blocks!) which the image has been accepted everywhere else at its native resolution!! myself, with the support of my clients which I serve for several projects for published materials are in agreement to me changing my policy where by Adobe Stock is no longer the favoured supplier of images to their projects, I will no longer supply images to Adobe Stock until rouge moderators have been removed from Adobe making the moderation process an unbiased environment for all photographers, at all levels.

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

jacquelingphoto2017
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 15, 2022

Hi @markb28653345 ,

Where are the rejected files? I don't see you upload any here. Why don't you upload a couple here for us to help you identify the issues with them? If you want us to have a fruitful discussion, please upload 2 or 3 of the rejected files to this thread.

Best wishes

Jacquelin

markb28653345
Participant
August 14, 2022

Dispite all other images being accepted I have replied to Nancy clearly some moderators are not getting the message, another test image was submitted using the process and meeting / exceeding Adobe's requirments as this tes image once again has been excepted on several other stock sites and passed several moderations, Adobe chose to assess the image at 0.16MPix at 72dpi insted of the 24MPix 300dpi as supplied to Adobe, No suprise image is being rejected for Quality Issues and severe artifacting. Adobe just what the hell is going on at your moderation team?

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 14, 2022

1. Stock Reviewers evaluate the files that are submitted; not the low-res thumbnail previews that you see in your Contributor panel. 

 

2. If you upload low-res images by mistake, the artificial intelligence filter will reject them automatically. 

 

3. Adobe Stock reviewers do not lurk in this user-to-user community.  Their job is to evaluate hundreds of submissions each day.  Your job is to contribute assets that are worthy of purchase by professional content creators.  Rejection isn't personal.  It's strictly business based on what Adobe Stock's customer buy.

 

4. Other microstock agencies have different acceptance standards.  Some are more forgiving than others and pay less in royalty fees.  By comparison,  Adobe Stock has higher quality standards and pays higher royalty fees. 

 

If you're happy working with other microstock sites, keep using them.  Nobody here has any personal interest in what you do. That's entirely your decision.  We wish you to do your best but if you can't, that's OK too.

 

Best of luck.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
jacquelingphoto2017
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 10, 2022

Hi @markb28653345,

All platforms I upload to that reviews files do so at at least 100% zoom. That was how I learn to inspect my files. All platforms have their different criteria. I too have files on other platforms that are rejected by Adobe that after closer inspection I find issues. If you have files that are rejected and would like to learn how to identify the issues on your own, upload a few here - no more than 3 at a time so that we can help you. Otherwise see what you can learn from here to look for to identify issues before uploading your files to Adobe

 

Some of these platforms accept files of lower quality and sell them at lower price than those of higher quality.

Best wishes

Jacquelin

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 9, 2022

What makes you think your images are evaluated at 72ppi?  That's nonesense.

Adobe Stock customers expect the highest visual and technical quality for use in commercial projects. 

 

Submission requirements are described in your Stock Contributor User Guide.  Read it.

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/user-guide.html/stock/contributor/help/photography-illustrations.ug.html

 

Photography Requirements:

  • Image format: JPEG 
  • Color space: sRGB
  • Minimum image resolution: 4MP (megapixels)
  • Maximum image resolution: 100MP (megapixels)
  • Maximum file size: 45MB (megabytes)

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
markb28653345
Participant
August 14, 2022
Nancy



I read the destructions before submission, and again after one of my
submitted image was flagged for artifacting out of a batch of several
images submitted, of which Adobe sent me the image, which was rejected,
which is a 24Mpix 300dpi image, originally sent to Adobe meeting or
exceeding the requirements as you have pointed out.



This image was transformed during the moderation process to 0.5Mpix 72dpi,
reviewed by the moderation team at these settings, then rejected, because
the image was artifacted to hell, artifacting caused during moderation. If
you transform anything down between the scales / resolution that are
discussed above, you are going to cause severe artifacting and noise into
the image…(being Avionics by trade I could spend all day discussing induced
artifacting into images by software or electronics!)



This was the only image out of the batch which was submitted which was
taken with tripod, image stabilization, and checked before submission for
artifacting up to 500% zoom 400% above recommended requirements by Adobe in
their submission criteria, and 300% above what some have placed in the post
for the level that moderators assess images up to. For all issues including
artifacting, and all the other markers which the requirements, which adobe
assess for moderation.



This includes that the image which was rejected out of all that was
submitted; is earmarked for a client’s project, had already been proofed by
the client, and has led to that particular client, and other clients who I
support where the work produced is seen internationally, looking at the
metrics for these clients and the photography I produce, clients projects,
and my images elsewhere have viewed 10 fold since this post, specifically
for the image in question which is on other sites so, clearly someone Adobe
has dropped a nut somewhere as multiple sites have approved the image
through their moderation process, Adobe being the only supplier to reject
the image.



Since I have called foul on the moderator for their processes; all other
images which were submitted in the batch and not assessed to the
exceeded standards as described above but meeting Adobe Standards before
submission as they are personal images with no earmarked projects have
since been accepted, without question.


But despite this; my clients still have stated that Adobe Stock is not to
be the chosen supplier for stock images on any of their future projects for
the foreseeable future. Advising that I am to look at other leading stock
image producers and independent suppliers going forward, as this is not the
only issue which has arisen with other moderated images from Adobe which
have caused issues for my client’s projects and have not met the minimum
requirements for submission as you have pointed out and should never have
passed the moderation process, unlike what was supplied in this case.
George_F
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 14, 2022

Feel free to post the photos of you'd like another opinion of them.  Sometimes a fresh set of eyes can see something that was missed the first time around.

 

George F, Photographer & Forum Volunteer
Legend
August 9, 2022

ppi is absolutely irrelevant and ignored by the moderators, and should be ignored by you. Adobe view actual pixels at 100%-200% . I really cannot figure out what you are saying about ppi; it is metadata, a hint of the size the image might be printed at.   You write "moderation team who transform the resolution from uncompressed 300dpi to an extremely compressed 72dpi". Adobe put a greatly reduced thumbnail of your pictures in your account records. This is not what the moderators looked at. They look at the original, and this is what the purchaser will receive if they pay (but not in their search results).

 

If you happen to want the opinion of the experienced contributors here, please share 1-3 original (as submitted) images and the rejection reason for each one.

 

I love the idea that you feel you can issue ultimatums to Adobe and their "rouge moderators" whatever they might be. Good luck with that. Adobe's mission is to reduce the cost of moderation, not to encourage amateurs or be a photo school. You are entering a supplier relationship, and these are rarely to the advantage or for the convenience of the supplier.

Ricky336
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 10, 2022

Hello Mark,

I think you misunderstand the DPI issue. (A lot of people do.) DPI = Dots Per Inch, and this refers to printing - the output! The number of dots per square inch of paper to produce a print. The more dots, the better the quality. If the photo to be printed is for a large billboard, the DPI can be lower as nobody looks at the sign close up and sees the dots.  If it is to be seen close up, then you need more dots. (The higher the DPI.)

Others mentioned PPI = Pixels Per Inch. This relates to how many pixels there are per square inch. Again this relates to the print size (output again) of your photo. (You are also mixing DPI with PPI. For digital images it's PPI.)

For screen viewing the PPI and DPI is irrelevant. Moderators don't print the image, they view it on the screen.  The DPI/PPI can be altered by the user who downloads the image and according to what size and quality they want the print to be can choose what value DPI/PPI they want before printing.

 

DPI and PPI Explained — Andrew Dacey Photography

PPI vs DPI: What's the Difference and Why It Matters to Photographers (slrlounge.com)

 

So, for the moderators viewing the image on the screen, the DPI/PPI is irrelevant; it does not affect the quality.

Ricky336
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 10, 2022

This reply is meant to be to the OP. It just got put in the wrong place.