Now here is a rejection I never expected to see. A pretty young teenage girl smiling rejected for overabundant photo category.

u will forgiv me fur saying so but that isolation looks like it was done with a chainsaw. I'm not saying its not sharp but just unnatural if u get my drift.

I am glad that I am not alone. Recently I got a lot of those.

I just got the same rejection--over abundance.  But it wasn't for an isolation.  I'm wondering if a) new reviewer, or b) new reason for reviewers to select from.

...whereas my next shot was approved, an isolated apple. 

     Well, maybe more people are buying apples than cotton.  Except for the textile industry.  They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away...

The original post was a little shorter than I wanted since I was in a bit of a hurry. So here's the full story behind this particular photo. I took 7 photos from a recent portrait session and isolated them. Every single one looks better with the background originally behind it and none of the photos were intended with isolation, or even stock, in mind. I took my time with some isolations, others, like this, were hacked in using the polygonal selection tool.

Part of the purpose of this was to see if I could make any sense of FT rejections. Of the seven photos, three were accepted. Two of them I expected, one I did not as the isolation was not much better than this. One of the rejected shots was obviously over-saturated, cropped and upsized to give some noise and some artifacting I expected a technical rejection, got a "type of photo" rejection. For two more with obvious shadows which look nice with the shadows continuing on and playing against the background (a brick wall painted white) but looked rather odd when isolated because of those same shadows, I expected these to get a "type of photo" or "aesthetic quality" rejection as that was the quickest and most obvious thing to see. These received technical rejections.

And then this one. I would have rejected it within a few seconds for technical reasons. Definitely not for "overabundant category". That is what shocked me on this one. Not the fact it was rejected, but the reason. It is like the reviewer clicked whatever button happened to be closest to his mouse cursor. Same with the others.

I agree completely with DanP that isolations, especially of people, should be done with background and lighting. Photoshop should be used for spot touches (the stray hot pixel or the darn cat hair that found its way onto the background.

And I'm really surprised that no one mentioned my misspelling of "overabundant" in the subject line!   

I agree the rejection reason should have been different may  be the reviewer hit the wrong button.
as for isolation I'd only stick with the pen tool,which I think is the best way to isolate.

I agree with this.  I think sometimes they hit the wrong rejection reason.  I also think rejections like "overabundant" or "too many" is often code for "we just don't like this". 

Frankly, I also think you should not be submitting images you know are of inferior quality just to test the reviewers.  All these sites are inundated with tens of thousands of images a week.  Don't the reviewers have enough to do inspecting people's legitimate efforts?