Shutterstock vs Istockphoto reviewers

[Dragomir Nikolov]

Shutterstock's or Istock's reviewers are better. Which of the two teams gives a more professional assessment of your photos? In my opinion Shutterstock reviewers overdo with "out of focus" about images in focus. Please, share your opinions.

[bard108]

I've just had a large batch of images rejected of apparently being OOF or "Overuse"...

To be fair, there were a couple that could have been a touch sharper but I get the feeling that if they see a couple in the batch which are no good they just write off all the others

[Nic99]

Both agencies have competent and incompetent reviewers.

[Pauws99]

There are now two extremes I only get rejections now  from I-Stock for copyright reasons for SS my rejection rate is embarrassing - I think SS demand a particular look but some reviewers just appear to reject everything out of hand



 

[Red Dove]

I'll take them both over DT reviewers and their fatuous "this file is similar..." nonsense.

[Pauws99]

DT seem to be accepting almost everything now - apart from their similars policy I used to think they were very fair in the past. Unlike Dune who I also used to think were fair and reject almost everything now.

[MarcvsTvllivs]

I did not know that iStock (still) has reviewers��

This. Until recently, they would only reject my images for property release reasons. Now, they don't even do that -- images which arguably might need a property release just stay in "pending" forever.

[Pixart]

I seem to get most Shutterstock rejections on the weekend and of course, only about 5% of the time I can accept the reason.  When I looked at a reviewer job posting it requested full time reviewers work at least 5 hours on the weekend... that would leave them reviewing while either drunk or hungover, resenting their job while the family is having fun,  or struggling with their children home from school and fighting like only siblings can fight...

[Red Dove]

.....images which arguably might need a property release just stay in "pending" forever.

A couple of my original artworks were placed in "pending" further review. I eventually deleted them after weeks of zero movement/response to my follow ups.

"Pending" must be the file for "we haven't a clue how to interpret our own submission policy so we'll leave it on this pile here with all the others until the owners get cheesed off enough to delete them".

[heywoody]

Been said already, I don't think IS review the images as such anymore, just check for potential copyright issues

[zoe]

Some of the images I've seen on iStock lately are so bad that it's actually getting embarrassing to be associated with the site. The technical standards were incredibly high previously, but now it's a joke.
SS seem to have reasonable standards aside from their obsession with almost all of the image being in sharp focus even if creatively you have created a shallow DOF on something intentionally. Fotolia are similarly stringent in this respect to.

[photostockad]

I've just got rejected some images with overuse and poor light. Are night image so if is just looking at histogram of course is poor light. No consistency in responses at SS. One day is 9/10 accepted, next day 9/10 rejected with the same images standards. And, of course, i am looking at 100% at images.

[Milleflore]

IS seem overly concerned with trademark issues. They just asked me to remove the word, Instagram, from keywords in relevant images in DeepMeta ... whilst SS, according to their article on retro filters, say that it is permissible in keywords, but not in titles.

[ShadySue]

IS seem overly concerned with trademark issues. They just asked me to remove the word, Instagram, from keywords in relevant images in DeepMeta ... whilst SS, according to their article on retro filters, say that it is permissible in keywords, but not in titles.

I've noticed SS sometimes to be surprisingly 'slack' in allowing a trademarked object as a main focus of 'general' (not editorial-only) images.

[Milleflore]

There was a very interesting article on trademark issues by Dan Heller that basically says photographers do not need property releases, only the publishers do:

http://www.danheller.com/model-release-copyrights.html

Excerpt:

"Some photographers ask, "why do photographers need releases?" The answer to that is photographers don't need releases. Publishers do. Photographers get releases for photos so as to broaden the market of buyers for their photos. And not every publisher of a photo needs a release either�only those who might use the photo in a way that implies an association between them and the subject. Newspapers, magazines, books, exhibitions of art, and most other forms of publication do not need releases, thereby making it possible for you to take pictures of anyone and anything, and sell them to anyone. Now, if the person who wants to buy the photo needs a release, then you might want to have gotten one at the time you took the photo. And this is how the entire rumor mill got started with this "need a release" thread, and how it got to mangled into misinformation."

[heywoody]

There was a very interesting article on trademark issues by Dan Heller that basically says photographers do not need property releases, only the publishers do:

http://www.danheller.com/model-release-copyrights.html

Excerpt:

"Some photographers ask, "why do photographers need releases?" The answer to that is photographers don't need releases. Publishers do. Photographers get releases for photos so as to broaden the market of buyers for their photos. And not every publisher of a photo needs a release either�only those who might use the photo in a way that implies an association between them and the subject. Newspapers, magazines, books, exhibitions of art, and most other forms of publication do not need releases, thereby making it possible for you to take pictures of anyone and anything, and sell them to anyone. Now, if the person who wants to buy the photo needs a release, then you might want to have gotten one at the time you took the photo. And this is how the entire rumor mill got started with this "need a release" thread, and how it got to mangled into misinformation."

It wouldn't be great for business for an agency if its buyers were sued en masse for copyright violation though

[Milleflore]

Its still a very grey area, and I appreciate that agencies need to do something to enhance their sales. Protecting buyers is a bit difficult. As the article suggests most releases are not worth the paper they are written on.

Still, a very interesting article with many areas open to debate.

[ShadySue]

Alamy makes it clear that the onus is on the buyers so long as the tog has indicated whether they need releases and whether the releases are available. They tend to be very conservative about when releases are applied. However, they leave it up to the buyer to make the call on the risk of using a particular image. Eg a tour company might think they would be unlikely to be sued for putting a huge photo of the Grand Canal with the names of the hotels and restaurants visible.
(some/many of) the micros however back up their files with legal guarantees so need the releases and specify the legislation the releases are valid under.
Dan Heller is an interesting resource, but I've never seen him writing about the legal position outwith the US, whereas stock photos can be made or sold almost anywhere.

[stuttershock]

Shutterstock's or Istock's reviewers are better. Which of the two teams gives a more professional assessment of your photos? In my opinion Shutterstock reviewers overdo with "out of focus" about images in focus. Please, share your opinions.

spot on, they do. Elsewhere, they're pretty lame and accept things that one sometimes even has one's own doubts about. Still, haven't really figured these guys out yet.

[shudderstok]

Both are garbage in my opinion as are all microstock sites processes. I am an old trad shooter and am used to editors reviewing my work and taking only 10%-15% as a good average. This garbage of "inspecting" "reviewing" rather than truly "editing" is what has ruined the industry as a whole. I think all of them should do a serious "edit" and make stock photography a thing to be proud of again, but this nonsense of accept everything is pure rubbish. To this day I still submit to Getty and have an honest to god editor review my work and accept only the best work, and rejecting the rest. I am used to that so I don't have a hissy fit temper tantrum if my work has been rejected like what seems to happen with the microstock crowd. When I hear of averages of 80% or whatever acceptance, it makes me sick.

[heywoody]

Both are garbage in my opinion as are all microstock sites processes. I am an old trad shooter and am used to editors reviewing my work and taking only 10%-15% as a good average. This garbage of "inspecting" "reviewing" rather than truly "editing" is what has ruined the industry as a whole. I think all of them should do a serious "edit" and make stock photography a thing to be proud of again, but this nonsense of accept everything is pure rubbish. To this day I still submit to Getty and have an honest to god editor review my work and accept only the best work, and rejecting the rest. I am used to that so I don't have a hissy fit temper tantrum if my work has been rejected like what seems to happen with the microstock crowd. When I hear of averages of 80% or whatever acceptance, it makes me sick.

so what is your MS acceptance ratio?  it's a different market - one has to assume that a crowd sourced model will have different standards, one would also assume that the real pros, used to the trad editing, would be in the 99%+ bracket

[shudderstok]

Both are garbage in my opinion as are all microstock sites processes. I am an old trad shooter and am used to editors reviewing my work and taking only 10%-15% as a good average. This garbage of "inspecting" "reviewing" rather than truly "editing" is what has ruined the industry as a whole. I think all of them should do a serious "edit" and make stock photography a thing to be proud of again, but this nonsense of accept everything is pure rubbish. To this day I still submit to Getty and have an honest to god editor review my work and accept only the best work, and rejecting the rest. I am used to that so I don't have a hissy fit temper tantrum if my work has been rejected like what seems to happen with the microstock crowd. When I hear of averages of 80% or whatever acceptance, it makes me sick.

so what is your MS acceptance ratio?  it's a different market - one has to assume that a crowd sourced model will have different standards, one would also assume that the real pros, used to the trad editing, would be in the 99%+ bracket

to be honest i don't know what my MS acceptance rate is, but rest assured it is way too high. not every shot is a winner, not every shot is a "stock" shot. a second opinion from an "editor" will help me finalize my tightly edited submission. All I am saying is that nobody is worth having ridiculously high acceptance rates. The open door policy is what has killed finding images, who in their right mind wants to wade through pages and pages of 87% acceptance images when the reality is it should be in the 10%-20%. In my world it's called quality control. The amount of poorly lit, weakly composed images I see with frequency on every MS site saddens me, and that is mainly due to this "we have over 40 kazillionbillion images for you to choose from" attitude. Sorry, it's just my pet peeve, that and really bad keywords.