Well, we don't know what Adobe really do, but we have various guesses. It isn't that Adobe say - "no we have a dog already". In fact, if you search Adobe stock for "dog" you'll find they have 4,603,016 images matching. So, if you are just sending a neat picture of your favourite pet, the chances are quite good that there is already a similar picture - similar breed, location, behaviour. We're pretty sure that reviewers don't look through all 4 million. So, I speculate they do one or two of these things 1. Search on the same subject as you, or same keywords or whatever. See if your picture is visually similar to another one already there. 2. Do an image search of the entire database for something similar, with or without human review. So, why do Adobe do this? Frankly, for the customers. The customer does not want to search for "dog on cushion with treat" and see a lot of similar images. It wastes their time. They expect a wide range of treatments, settings, and styles. So -- did you do a search on your proposed subject? It's not enough to just go into your photo library and choose favourites: this is a commercial exercise and you have hundreds of thousands of rivals you are competing with. Many people say that pictures of dogs, cats, trees, flowers and sunsets (among other subjects) are not worth submitting anyway - too many great images already, just too many images - so yours won't even be seen, still less licensed. Instead, imagine you're a customer, think of a commercial need, do searches, see what is under-represented, and seize that opportunity!
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