Rejection due to lack of quality

[tim_0384]

Hello everyone,

the photo is noise-free, has a deep depth of field, and beautiful colors. What could be the problem?
I submitted a second one in landscape format, which was also rejected.

Thanks for your oppinion.

[Abambo]

You would need to correct the exposure and take down the saturation. The asset is not level and would need a perspective correction. In addition, there are artefacts in the image, very visible if you check the clouds.

You also have chomatic aberration and at least some of the people could require a model release. 

I doubt that you will need a property release for the city hall, but eventually a moderator could also give you a final refusal on that ground. Anyhow, this is theoretical, as the quality issues are probably not corrigible here.

[tim_0384]

Thanks for the reply. I like slightly oversaturated landscape photos and have submitted them quite successfully to an old account. Perhaps times have changed, though. Unfortunately, I can't find the artifacts in the clouds... The slight misalignment is correct, yes. I only have PS Elements at the moment, where it's not as easy to correct this as in Lightroom.

What also worries me is that when I try to reopen the image in Camera Raw, many fields are colored blue. As soon as I open the image, it returns to normal. Is this related to the color profile, or perhaps because I upscaled by 2 using AI?

[Abambo]

You shouldn't upscale the pictures... (but I too would by now ignore this, as many generative AI fake images are getting upscaled without limits....)

As for the clouds:

If camera raw as display errors, I would guess this to be an graphics card or driver issue than anything else. The perspective and level can be nicely corrected in Lightroom (Classic) or Camera Raw. In most cases you would not need to open the asset in Photoshop (Elements). But yes, as Photoshop Elements was until recently a for buy option, you may have an older version of that.

(Nb: You upscaled by AI? You probably used a program claiming to upscale with the help of AI, that is different from using generative AI. Just saying)

(Nb 2: I did edit my initial answer after posting, so you may not have gotten all what I wrote.)

[tim_0384]

Thanks. The clouds look good to me, except for the "spot" in the bottom right, which could be removed. Or do you mean because the denoising and sharpening (presumably) made them look "painted"? You're really close in that case, so you can't see it at all from a distance... Yes, I've experimented with AI, including how to enhance original images with it. If it produces artifacts, I'll leave it alone, but so far I haven't noticed anything. I'm using Photoshop Elements, the latest version, which I paid for.

[Abambo]

No, real clouds are like cotton wool. This is not cotton wool, with soft transitions. And yes, this is a consequence of the denoising and sharpening and enlargement. You need to check your assets at 100%. You will see the issues.

[daniellei4510]

The building and horizon line are slanted.

[tim_0384]

Thanks, I just discovered the Auto-Align feature in Photoshop Elements. I used to use Lightroom, and it was different back then... 🙂

[Abambo]

Back then was when?

You can mostly manually fix the level issues in your picture.