Looking for input: Batch of 70 photos rejected because of quality issues

[mathiasrh]

Hi community, 

I am uploading to Adobe Stock (and others) for about 6 years now and have a portfolio of roughly 5.000 images. Means I know my way around quidelines and so on. 

I am shooting with a Sony A1 and a Mavic 3 and try to produce very high quality photos in a very high resoltion. 

I was always happy with the moderation on Adobe side - until recently almost all my images get disapproved because of "Quality issues". Yesterday, a batch of 70 images was disapproved. That's very sad, because I consider some of them as my very best work. And they have been accepted on other platforms. 

I am attaching some examples as well as a overview screenshot of the images. 

Would be interested in your take on this!

[RALPH_L]

0003- the foreground is distracting, the subject is not in focus, the shadows on the monument should be lightened.

0006- the subject is not in focus, the shadows on the volcanoes should be lightened, the sky is noisy (could be color noise) .

0007- the subject is not in focus, the shadows on the mountains should be lightened, the sky is noisy and has a magenta touch.

Overall, when viewing the other photos, I conclude focus, dark shadows and some noise is the problem. These can all be easily corrected in post processing.

[Jill_C]

Rejection-00005.jpg - underexposed in the shadows and there's a spot in the upper left corner that should be edited out.

Rejection-00001.jpg - lacks sharp focus and artifacts in the sky 

[mathiasrh]

Thanks for your feedback. I still don't think that those reasons where why the images were rejected.  I would like to let you know that Adobe Support has acknowledged that those images were rejected in error. Same as the last batch. 

My gut feeling is, that there is a lot of pressure on the content moderator due to the high amount of AI content. 

Here is the message from Adobe Support: 

Hello Mathias,

thank you very much for your message. The moderation team works independently and under its own management. Every day a lot of files are checked manually according to different parameters. Of course, errors can occur here from time to time.
This was certainly the case with a large number of your recent submissions.
I have now resent your files to the moderation team and assume that a weighty portion of your rejected files will be accepted.

[Jill_C]

Why did you post them here if you believe they will be accepted?

[mathiasrh]

@Jill_C I don't understand the question. Isn't this what the community is for? Asking questions? Of course I did believe the images would be accepted. That's why I posted them here to understand if someone else is facing similar issues recently and / or has different opinions and explanations. 

Additionally, I reached out to contributer support to get more details. Especially because the flaws mentioned here result in a specific rejection reason (Focus, Exposure, etc) and not simply "Quality Issue"

[Jill_C]

My point was that you asked for feedback, then rejected it. There are flaws in some of those images, though I didn't look at all of them.

It's actually quite surprising that you received a response from Support; they rarely respond to such queries. The Moderator's decisions are final, and there is no recourse. Imagine how besieged they would be with requests if every Contributor asked for their rejects to be re-reviewed! 

Good luck with the 2nd review of your 8mages. Do let us know how it goes.

[mathiasrh]

@Jill_C Thanks for clarification, Jill. It was not my intension to reject the feedback. I just wanted to point out that besides your feedback, that's absolutely accurate, I have the feeling that another issue with the submission is there as well. 

That's a very interesting point you bring up. I have extremely good experience with reaching out to Contributor Support. I recently had a batch of about 50 images rejected because of copyright infringement - but there was no copyright infringement. The support was very helpful and immediately put the images online, without a second round of moderation. 

I personally would not suggest to overuse that - I only reach out in extreme cases. Like the one above when 105 images have been rejected for the exact same reason within a day of uploading. 

I let you know how it goes. The interesting part is, that right now the images are not in the submission area, but also not in the rejection area of the contributor account.

[israelgutierrez]

I have faced a similar situation with four images I recently uploaded. Good quality studio product photos now rejected because "quality issues".
I uploaded them to another image bank and they didn't found any problem. The first day two of them were sold.
With that "Quality Issues" Adobe Stock is the one that lose money.

[Jill_C]

If you post a couple of those here, the Community members can provide their opinions as to the reject reasons. Acceptance by other stock agencies is no indication that images meet Adobe's quality requirements.

[Nancy OShea]

How many have you sold?  I ask because acceptance into Stock inventory is no guarantee of consistent sales activity. 

Stock inventory has exploded to over 300 million assets so they can afford to more choosy now -- as well they should.

As an unpaid forum volunteer, I haven't time to evaluate 10 images per person.  1-2 is the best you can hope for.

This image has two obvious mistakes which you should have identified yourself. 

1. The poorly focused foreground subject is distracting and sticks out like a sore thumb.  As a composition, it doesn't work.

2. Underexposed.  See histogram panel.

Examine your images at 100-300% magnification.  Make corrections if you can.  Discard the ones you can't fix.

Submit 5-6 of your highest quality images per batch. 

That should help reduce your rejection rate.

Hope that helps.  Good luck with your next submission.

[mathiasrh]

Thank you so much. I absolutely appreciate the amount of time you have invested and your feedback. 

Yes, I actually do sell. In the last five years I das 18.000 downloads with about 20k EUR income what is great for me. 

About the issue posted: I am happy to share that all of the image, the complete rejected batch, is now online. Made a screenshot. 

Again, I appreciate all the input, that's very valuable!