Is there a standard in the approval process?

[charless79174413]

So i have been a stock contributor for a little while now, and am starting to get a little irritated because of how many rejections there are. Some of the ones that are rejected are better than some of the ones approved. I had a photo recently rejected due to "noise" that had no noise what so ever...i was zoomed in at 120% in Photoshop and you still couldnt see any noise what so ever. Also, the rejection reason of possible being too retouched or something like that, with a statement of customers dont want that in a photo...this is on all of my black and white photos that have been rejected, and yet there are tons of them when you search through the site that do rather well. So my question to you is, who does the approvals, what are their prerequisites, and are the required to show that they have capable equipment to show our submitted work in high resolution? Are they mandated to do aprovals only on actual computers or cam they do them on mo ile devices as well...because mobile devices will show noise and artifacts that arent there

[MatHayward]

Images are reviewed at 100% by humans with "capable equipment."

It is likely the post processing rejection reason you referenced is due to the black and white conversion. Generally speaking you are better off submitting a clean, sharp version of your image in color. Most designers buying stock are capable of converting to black and white if that is their preference. We have found through customer feedback they prefer to do their own conversions so the tone matches their project exactly. We will accept some black and white content but that is the exception in most cases.

Kind regards,

Mat Hayward

[BluTopaz]

What if the image was originally shot in black and white?

[MatHayward · Accepted solution]

It is likely we will not be able to accept it. Most black and white images are rejected regardless of how they were captured. When shooting for stock, I recommend you shoot RAW to give yourself the most flexibility.

-Mat