Newcomer wondering how to entice without post processing

Report · Mar 07, 2018

Hi. Super new to....well, all things photography, as well as this forum.

I uploaded 5 photos to be reviewed and 4 of them got rejected due to obvious clarity/post processing flaws. I did not know it was Adobe "best practice" to leave the file as raw as possible.

How do you all entice buyers without too much post processing? I feel confident in my photos but 10000% times better when I edit (obviously) - so does that mean I need to take better photos, or do I just proceed with uploading photos that need editing in hopes that buyers would still find beauty in the photo even though it's not really beautiful at the time of upload?

Attaching an example that got rejected. Thank you for any feedback in advance.

Report · Mar 08, 2018

To entice buyers you need to have something they want - these types of photos don't do so well, but you just never know!

Regarding your pic- there is too much noise and jpeg artifacts. In post processing don't overuse the luminance noise slider and don't sharpen too much. Also don't use the shadows slider to lighten the shadow areas too much either, because this also can introduce noise.

In submitting photos it is best to do minimal adjustments - just to make the photo well balanced. Don't use filters like the gradient filter to add colour - but you can use it to brighten or darker some areas - the adjustment brush etc (this is assuming you use Lightroom).

Composition is a very important element here - the most important actually.

Have a read of this guide:

https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/stock/contributor/Adobe_Stock_Contributor_Guide.pdf

It will give you some insight!

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Report · Mar 08, 2018

Hi,

I agree with ricky336 that the image processing here was too strong and caused image errors and thus lead to rejection.

You have to consider that the starting material of the smartphone photo (IPhone 6) is not suitable for a strong image processing, the sensor and the image resolution of the built-in camera does not allow this. In this case, such image errors can also occur during recording and are amplified as a result of post processing.

Generally, therefore, make sure that the image is of good quality when taken and requires little image post processing.

If you like to take pictures with a smartphone and offer them here, then you have more possibilities in post processing when it can take pictures in RAW format.

Greets.

v.poth