I'm a beginner, from what I was told I could upload photos from my phone. I used a few tools to get my pixels better, but I was still denied. Where did I go wrong? I have photos attached.
By @Savi 1
Sure, you can submit phone pictures, but they will be vetted the same as any other pictures, taken with the most professional equipment. I don't know what tools you used to "get your pixels better", but upscaling is not a recommended tool, as it does not improve anything in your picture. And Whatsapp is for sure not a tool to improve pictures, to the contrary.
Check your assets at 100% to judge sharpness and details. Use the histogram to judge the exposure. Get the contrast correct, edit out all logos (or take your pictures in a way that there are no logos in the picture). Learn about composition and the golden ratio/rule of thirds... They are important not only for stock, but for any picture you take, also the snapshots of family members.
And read the stock contributor manual, and follow the recommendations there, instead of referring to other documents, that are generally OK, but not targeted to the very specific requirements for stock. So your order of precedance should be: learning general photography and then learning about the very specific stock requirements.
BTW: they are more or less the same for all stock databases, but it is always good practice to check the specific requirements if you contribute to more than one stock database.
Gloves: logos (would be an IP violation refusal), the background is not neutral enough, best is to have something simple, like a grey background, or something more logical, like a nice table plate. The contrast is not correct (blacks and whites are missing on the histogram), and the highlights are disturbing. Details are getting "optimized" out, because of the noise reduction. The buckle is flat and looks like poor-quality plastic.
The plate with the cake and the red background:
The histogram shows missing blacks (left) and no whites (right). A correctly exposed image would show data over the whole histogram. Parts of the image are sharp, others unsharp in an either random manner. It looks to me that the noise reduction did a bad job and the the upscaling did amplify the errors:
The tablecloth is a plain red paper, which also blends in with the pattern of the paper plate. As such tableclothes have normally some kind of pattern, I suspect that the noise reduction did do here too a bad job, by flattening the cloth. In addition, a red background is rarely a good choice for stock assets, as it is too intrusive to the eye and takes to much of the observer's attention. It also changes the colour perception wich is not good for stock assets.
When it comes to composition, you have made a lot wrong: the plate is cut off on both sides, the particles on the table are not pleasantly arranged (indeed they are for sure as is, and nobody did think about either cleaning them up (especially when cut off at the borders) or to rearrange them in a nice way, as is done more often than not. at the top there is an undefined element lying around, I think it's a mug. You should have got that one either completly in the frame, or completly out. The perspective at which the camera has been hold is not good. This and the symetric cut offs makes the image unpleasant to the eye. None will buy something like this to advertise a nice birthday party.
I'll stop here, you can guess the rest. Check the food photography you are competing against. Food photography is highly choreoraphed and snapshots like yours are rarely good enough to attract potential buyers.
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