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Author Topic: Yep, the review process has changed this year  (Read 13688 times)

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OM

« Reply #25 on: May 08, 2015, 20:13 »
+3
Here I'm completely guessing...but how's about all uploaded images for review are first passed through various proprietary software checks and 'flagged' for the reviewers attention (maybe camera types, sharpness, white balance, histogram etc). If a whole batch is flagged by some piece of software first, the reviewer can be 'lazy' and just reject the lot. Gets paid anyway without the responsibility of letting through something that might not be 100% which could come back to bite them later.
Alternatively, reviewer takes the time to evaluate every 'flagged' image separately and carefully  deciding that the majority of the batch is up to scratch and OKs it. Which of these two scenarios is most likely?
Let's face it, a reviewer would have to be very confident in their own abilities to OK anything that has been flagged as dubious by software and passing the image for the collection would take time that the reviewer doesn't have when they're on a piece rate. Plausible??


« Reply #26 on: May 09, 2015, 02:05 »
+8
1) I think they automatically reject based only on iso or camera type. Good to strip off all the EXIF info.

2) Reviewers really have reject targets, two of them confiremd this to me. So in fact its easier to simply accept everything and then reject to fill the quota and you save a LOT of the time.

3) Unless agencies quit this crap behaviour causing me substantial loss of time, I will resubmit the same images again and again. I will not bother complaining at forums or posting questions to support - it never works. Simply minor change and resubmit. This is especially true on SS, but also Pond is now rejecting photos like mad. 

marthamarks

« Reply #27 on: May 09, 2015, 13:43 »
+5
The other day I reported somewhere on MSG that after a few complete-batch rejections from SS, my acceptance level had returned to normal.

OOPS!!! Spoke too soon.

A small batch of 9 was totally rejected this morning. Perfectly sharp at 100%, noise-free images from the very same shoots as the ones that were accepted a few days ago are now dumped for "Noise--Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts and/or is poorly rasterized" or "Focus--Subject is blurry, too soft, or out of focus when viewed at full resolution."

It's just too erratic to be credible. Some of these images will go back into the mix for another try later on.

marthamarks

« Reply #28 on: May 09, 2015, 13:48 »
+2
1) I think they automatically reject based only on iso or camera type. Good to strip off all the EXIF info.

My latest images were shot with a brand-new Canon D7 and my tried-and-true Canon 500 4.0 L, which is a fantastic combination for birds and other wildlife. Usually at ISO 100, although I'll go as high as 160 for early-morning shots.

It's hard to believe SS reviewers would reject those images for either iso or camera/lens type.

Semmick Photo

« Reply #29 on: May 09, 2015, 17:13 »
+3
I have a 6D and L lens. Still get rejections. Images with 450D shot template get 100% acceptance. Meta data rejections I don't bebelieve in that.

« Reply #30 on: May 10, 2015, 02:03 »
-2
So, basically you're all saying, with top lens, you can't make bad photo?

Because, while it's true, you can't make a good quality photo with bad lens, you can make a bad quality photo with good lens.

Semmick Photo

« Reply #31 on: May 10, 2015, 03:18 »
+3
No one is saying that

« Reply #32 on: May 10, 2015, 03:26 »
0

2) Reviewers really have reject targets, two of them confiremd this to me. So in fact its easier to simply accept everything and then reject to fill the quota and you save a LOT of the time.

3) Unless agencies quit this crap behaviour causing me substantial loss of time, I will resubmit the same images again and again. I will not bother complaining at forums or posting questions to support - it never works. Simply minor change and resubmit. This is especially true on SS, but also Pond is now rejecting photos like mad.


Well said! Shocking about targets and so true about complaining doesn't work! (http://www.microstockgroup.com/members-only-discussion/my-recent-experience-with-pond5-never-ever-using-them-again/msg415185/#msg415185)

marthamarks

« Reply #33 on: May 10, 2015, 08:25 »
0
Because, while it's true, you can't make a good quality photo with bad lens, you can make a bad quality photo with good lens.

We all know that.

I've made plenty of bad images with my "L" lenses. But those get tossed out in the first round of culling in Lightroom and are not the ones that make the cut through repeated rounds of 100% inspections and post-processing and ultimately find their way to SS.

« Reply #34 on: May 11, 2015, 13:03 »
+7
1) I think they automatically reject based only on iso or camera type. Good to strip off all the EXIF info.

2) Reviewers really have reject targets, two of them confiremd this to me. So in fact its easier to simply accept everything and then reject to fill the quota and you save a LOT of the time.

3) Unless agencies quit this crap behaviour causing me substantial loss of time, I will resubmit the same images again and again. I will not bother complaining at forums or posting questions to support - it never works. Simply minor change and resubmit. This is especially true on SS, but also Pond is now rejecting photos like mad.

Something's definitely going on. I had to contact SS about the review on my editorial images - 6 rejected for focus issues, wrong descriptions, color cast, etc... They almost drove me bonkers by telling me my images have the same descriptions - they do not!!! They say all images are out of focus - the are not!!! All sharp, right relevant descriptions, no cast - all 6 are accepted *everywhere* else I submit to, and that's a few dozens agencies.... Seemed completely absurd to me until I saw this thread - looks like someone's trying to improve their reject stats or fulfill quota or whatever, I see no other explanation. I won't be resubmitting the images, having close 15000 images in my port it's not gonna make or break me, but for sure weird stuff is happening there...
Being in this business for over 10 years I see a pattern: it looks like the more agency is selling (=the more submissions they get) the weirder their review process becomes... I guess you can only handle so many submissions in a reasonable way, it's doesn't scale right, so you get results that are close to random.

« Reply #35 on: May 11, 2015, 19:48 »
+4
Not at all justifying the rejections and reviewers,

but lets' look at the numbers:
At present, SS is accepting presently 400,000 images a week.
If they are rejecting about half, that would be another 400,000,
the current practice discourages photographers from resubmitting 200,000 images and dissuades them from submitting another 200,000  - adding all these numbers to the present 400,000 would bring it to a total 1,200,000 images a week or 62 million new images every  year. Where it will end?

 

marthamarks

« Reply #36 on: May 11, 2015, 23:52 »
+1
Not at all justifying the rejections and reviewers,

but lets' look at the numbers:
At present, SS is accepting presently 400,000 images a week.
If they are rejecting about half, that would be another 400,000,
the current practice discourages photographers from resubmitting 200,000 images and dissuades them from submitting another 200,000  - adding all these numbers to the present 400,000 would bring it to a total 1,200,000 images a week or 62 million new images every  year. Where it will end?

Good point, Les.

« Reply #37 on: May 12, 2015, 02:44 »
+6
Not at all justifying the rejections and reviewers,

but lets' look at the numbers:
At present, SS is accepting presently 400,000 images a week.
If they are rejecting about half, that would be another 400,000,
the current practice discourages photographers from resubmitting 200,000 images and dissuades them from submitting another 200,000  - adding all these numbers to the present 400,000 would bring it to a total 1,200,000 images a week or 62 million new images every  year. Where it will end?

Good point, Les.

I can understand that they felt the need to limit the acceptance of the massive influx of images, but why question our intelligence with ridiculous reasons such as "focus" and "noise" when that is clearly incorrect. Why not provide a valid and honest reason such as" Thank you for your submission, but due to an oversupply of images of this subject we limit the acceptance of such images to more unique images, even though your image may be technically correct".

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #38 on: May 12, 2015, 03:09 »
+4
" Thank you for your submission, but due to an oversupply of images of this subject we limit the acceptance of such images to more unique images, even though your image may be technically correct".
If honest, that would mean that for every submission, the inspectors would need to look at the collection and compare the new image's subject with what's already there. That would be pretty time-consuming, thereby costly either for the inspector or the agency.

« Reply #39 on: May 12, 2015, 03:20 »
+2
" Thank you for your submission, but due to an oversupply of images of this subject we limit the acceptance of such images to more unique images, even though your image may be technically correct".
If honest, that would mean that for every submission, the inspectors would need to look at the collection and compare the new image's subject with what's already there. That would be pretty time-consuming, thereby costly either for the inspector or the agency.

They are already rejecting images based on criteria other than the reported reasons. All I want to see is a valid reason rather than something that not only agitate contributors but also contribute nothing towards the improvement of future submission.

Af8

« Reply #40 on: May 12, 2015, 04:07 »
0
It wouldn't surprise me if SS are starting to use the underlying data from EXIF's and other sources to monitor the review process.  Most agencies hold more data than they know what to do with, however, SS have put out a few blog posts recently that would indicate that they're focusing on it e.g. the pass rate for different cameras.  After reading that I went back and calculated my pass rate to compare and I was within a small margin of the average.

Hopefully this is what they're doing so that they can try and bring some consistency to their review process which is critical to they're success.

« Reply #41 on: May 12, 2015, 13:04 »
0
Has anyone read Rob Sylvan's book "Taking Stock"? Rob was a reviewer at IS and has some great insight into rejections and ways to mitigate them. I think we all have felt the sting of a summary rejection of an entire batch. More often than not, I have gotten them all approved just by intermixing them in with other submissions...I consider it the cost of doing business in a commodity environment.

 


« Reply #42 on: May 12, 2015, 15:51 »
+2
Not at all justifying the rejections and reviewers,

but lets' look at the numbers:
At present, SS is accepting presently 400,000 images a week.
If they are rejecting about half, that would be another 400,000,
the current practice discourages photographers from resubmitting 200,000 images and dissuades them from submitting another 200,000  - adding all these numbers to the present 400,000 would bring it to a total 1,200,000 images a week or 62 million new images every  year. Where it will end?


Les, sure they shouldn't be accepting everything that get thrown their way, but you would expect at least some common sense in the review process. They reject high quality content for absurd reasons and non-existing issues, I don't know if it's their software malfunctioning or human factor but it's sometimes just pure nonsense. Here is a couple of images that I mentioned in my post earlier:
https://500px.com/photo/106062461/nice-tramway-at-place-massena-by-elena-elisseeva?from=user_library
https://500px.com/photo/105787421/waterfront-restaurants-in-villefranche-sur-mer-by-elena-elisseeva?from=user_library
- these are accepted to 500 Prime, note they have absolutely relevant and very different descriptions, there is no technical problems with them, and yet I am told by SS review team that the descriptions are the same and images are blurry. This is after my second attempt to resubmit (with proper process). This doesn't make any sense whatsoever, so something is just not working right.



« Reply #43 on: May 12, 2015, 20:00 »
0
Elena,

I totally agree with you and most other posters.
I wasn't siding with the reviewers by any means, since I get enough of the same illogical rejections myself. Sometimes, you really wonder if a human could write such a nonsense.

My comment was merely to show that for SS, our rejections are just a drop in the sea of the ever increasing image tide. And maybe a misguided attempt to stem that tide.

Rinderart

« Reply #44 on: May 12, 2015, 20:26 »
+2
Elena,

I totally agree with you and most other posters.
I wasn't siding with the reviewers by any means, since I get enough of the same illogical rejections myself. Sometimes, you really wonder if a human could write such a nonsense.

My comment was merely to show that for SS, our rejections are just a drop in the sea of the ever increasing image tide. And maybe a misguided attempt to stem that tide.

Been thinking that also a long time Les. But. Like said there mentality is 400,000 accepted every week. so who cares.

« Reply #45 on: May 13, 2015, 08:56 »
0
All I can do is guess. Knowing SS they've taken a look at the percentage of rejections averaged over the years.

In the end we are left with the above oxymoron.

Without actually being involved in shutterstock's review or content screening process; we are left to guess.

Based on shutterstocks statement all we actually know for sure, is that the process involves storing undefined data or attributes for each review in a database.

We could take a leap and also assume that they use data driven database queries to analyze that data, combined with review statistic's which they have already collected .

There are several clues which point to some data driven rejection criteria.

Case in point:
Recently, I submitted some pictures taken by Nikon Coolpix A. This is a tiny camera, however it uses an APS-C sized sensor with 16MP. According to DXO Mark, it has higher IQ (and resolution as well) than D300. The lens is a very sharp fixed 18.5mm wide angle.

The pictures I took were taken all outside in good light, at base ISO, and as far I can see the IQ is way better than D300 and or Canon 7D.

a) Paradoxically, despite the sharper image from this camera, most of these pictures were rejected due to:
Focus--Subject is blurry, too soft, or out of focus when viewed at full resolution.
Noise--Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts and/or is poorly rasterized.
Poor Lighting--Image has exposure issues, unfavorable lighting conditions, and/or incorrect white balance. 

If the better images by Coolpix A are rejected and the mediocre ones by D300 are accepted, one can only assume that the reviewers (human or automated) do not look at the image quality, but only at the camera model in exif.

b) Another clue pointing to automated reviews could be the recent change in submission comments from a free-form text field to a drop-down menu with just a few standard (and useless) options.
 

« Reply #46 on: May 13, 2015, 12:08 »
+4
b) Another clue pointing to automated reviews could be the recent change in submission comments from a free-form text field to a drop-down menu with just a few standard (and useless) options.

Yup means no human is expected to read it... agreed. It's like automated "customer service" for most companies these days - they don't even give you an option for "operator" anymore (although stubbornly pressing "0" about 25 times sometimes still works:))

Semmick Photo

« Reply #47 on: May 13, 2015, 12:30 »
+2
I'll say it again I shoot with a 6D and get bogus rejections. I firmly believe images are not rejected on meta data. It's just another conspiracy theory.

Uncle Pete

« Reply #48 on: May 13, 2015, 22:49 »
+1
"speak to representative" or repeatedly shouting "Help" seem to work also.

b) Another clue pointing to automated reviews could be the recent change in submission comments from a free-form text field to a drop-down menu with just a few standard (and useless) options.

Yup means no human is expected to read it... agreed. It's like automated "customer service" for most companies these days - they don't even give you an option for "operator" anymore (although stubbornly pressing "0" about 25 times sometimes still works:))

« Reply #49 on: May 14, 2015, 02:09 »
0
I don't think they reject based on EXIF.

I use Sony(A6000 for the moment), and have untill a month ago stripped EXIF from my stock photos, because I had som bad experience some years ago where people looked at exif in digital competitions, and just ignored my photos. Without EXIF they were not ignored.

But a month ago I stopped stripping EXIF from the stock photos to see if it had any influence, and it hasn't. I am not as productive as many of you, but I have managed to upload 36 photos in that month with EXIF, and only two were rejected. One of them I agree with, the other I'm not sure.

ISO has generally been from 100 to 320, but one of the accepted is ISO 1000, which makes me think that they don't automaticly reject based on EXIF.


 

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