Author Topic: Update on Similar Refusals (Read 4600 times)

MPfoto71 · « **Reply #1 on:** April 30, 2025, 16:04 »

@Raul
Thanks for the info!
It's definitely good that we now at least know that there has been a fundamental change.

I've read through the help page, but I still can't tell now before uploading why some of my (for example) safari images will be “too similar” and others won't.
In order to be able to assess this before uploading, you would have to do a search in the entire Adobe database for each image beforehand - actually, you would even have to do the search before you take the image :-)

I don't think this is realistically feasible for the contributors - it would be far too time-consuming for the providers, who are already under a lot of cost pressure.

From the Adobe side, I understand that - you want the widest possible collection with optimal results for the customer. And of course it's about making money, that's clear

In my personal opinion, I see the following scenario here:
-> The more variants you could theoretically upload, the higher the chance that more variants will go through, so the system is more likely to reward the “image factory spammers” who actually caused the problem.

Nonetheless, thanks for the info

zeljkok · « **Reply #2 on:** April 30, 2025, 18:15 »

Is this effort going to extend to existing horribly spammed portfolios, like this one:

https://stock.adobe.com/sg/search/images?creator_id=206533842&filters

(How was something like this accepted in the first place, is beyond me)

pancaketom · « **Reply #3 on:** April 30, 2025, 19:11 »

Thanks for coming here and at least telling us that this is a change. I totally agree with the suggestions in the link - that doesn't seem to match the similar rejections I have heard about or seen.

For example - I take a lot of mountain photos, and to some extent all mountains look alike, but just because I have a photo of mount Everest doesn't mean that a photo of Mount Washington is similar and should be rejected - or maybe Adobe thinks so, in which case that would save me trouble uploading there.

As far as rejecting images that are similar to images that someone has already submitted, that means that the people who managed to get them accepted recently are at a significant advantage. I have images accepted years ago that sold well for a while, but then got replaced in the search by more recent similar images others submitted. It would be nice if I could get newer replacements accepted so the sales could come back, or the algorithm could favor the original images instead of the similars that got accepted before the latest anti-similar crusade.

I won't post any examples - there are plenty to be found though of really egregious portfolios. When people that carefully select and keyword images to upload see them it makes a mockery of any pretense of reasonable review. Sure, bad images are going to slip through and good stuff will get refused from time to time, but the sheer volume of some of these really makes one wonder.

zeljkok · « **Reply #4 on:** May 02, 2025, 12:32 »

Inadequacy of this policy is already beginning to show. I just had "similar content refusal"

Its Generalife Palace in Alhambra complex, Granada Spain. It's the only image I have of this structure, and have never been here in my life before - thus it can not be similar to anything in my port.

Does this mean every Architecture photo can be similar, every mountain photo can be similar, every flower, every ..... you get it.

While I applaud the effort to fight similars, much more thought is necessary then simple instruction to 3rd review company -or dumb AI engines, which is more likely the case. It would be much more efficient to clean up spammed portfolios that already exist (like the one I referenced in prior post), or even better all the AI nonsense.

gnirtS · « **Reply #5 on:** May 03, 2025, 02:59 »

Quote from: Raul.Ceron on April 30, 2025, 13:29

Hello!

You may have noticed in recent weeks more content being refused as “too similar.” This is part of our ongoing effort to maintain the relevancy and discoverability of content within the Adobe Stock collection.

We understand that an increase in refusals can be discouraging, but this is an opportunity to refine your portfolio and submit your strongest content in future submissions.

This really tells us nothing. Are our submissions now being scanned against images in our portfolio OR now scanned against other peoples images already submitted?
If its the latter, things like landscapes and other things are going to be impossible to submit.

How are these being decided ? Image AI analysis? Metadata? Human involved? There are a LOT of false positives.

Why arent policy changes conveyed to contributors via email? Only a tiny fraction are on this forum to read this thread.

Injustice for all · « **Reply #6 on:** May 03, 2025, 06:33 »

Thank you Raul and Adobe for this communication.

on one hand I'm happy about this because it's the end of spam,for a long time everyone here,including me,has been complaining about excessive spam,and now with these new review the spam is over.

on the other hand of course it can be a bit heavy at times,because obviously you dedicate time to creating content that is then rejected.

However,I think it's better now with the new review rather than how it was before,when people even flipped the images,thus sending the same image turned around,crazy things!

The reasons for rejection for similar content are not only for its own port,but also in comparison with what is already in the Adobe Stock library.

as far as I'm concerned in the last images I sent last week,I had a 50% rejection rate,anyway at the moment I'm very busy with premiere pro and media encoder,so I'm not upload many images lately but more videos.

from what I read I'm happy that Adobe rejects content even if the keywords are purposely wrong,because when I search for my content I often find dozens if not hundreds of contents that have absolutely nothing to do with my search.

Unfortunately this is the contributors' fault in my opinion,because they want to use AI to index,which is fine,but they don't take the time to check if the indexing generated is correct,thus causing confusion in the library.

We can all make mistakes in indexing,but unfortunately there are those who don't care,so I'm happy that Adobe also controls indexing.

I wanted to post elsewhere too,but the forum is really too slow and time is money,so I'll write it here briefly:

April was the best month this year,and better than last year,if only slightly.

I'm going back to work,greetings to everyone!

Bauman · « **Reply #7 on:** May 03, 2025, 08:00 »

Quote from: gnirtS on May 03, 2025, 02:59

How are these being decided ? Image AI analysis? Metadata? Human involved? There are a LOT of false positives.

I think it's done with an AI analysis.

AI software is probabilistic, not deterministic. So they make a lot of mistakes. I also have a lot of false positives and that's a problem, because each of my photos requires 30 minutes of post-production ... I'm not an AI spammer.

And this month Shutterstock sales have doubled Adobe Stock earnings for me.

I think sales have collapsed for everyone, because I lost 25% of sales in April, but my weekly ranking has improved.

I don't like the way Adobe Stock has been working lately.

It favors quantity over quality. It favors AI spammers and penalizes traditional photographers and illustrators who spend much time on their creations with absurd rejections.

zeljkok · « **Reply #8 on:** May 03, 2025, 12:50 »

Quote from: Bauman on May 03, 2025, 08:00

I think it's done with an AI analysis.

I don't like the way Adobe Stock has been working lately.

It favors quantity over quality. It favors AI spammers and penalizes traditional photographers and illustrators who spend much time on their creations with absurd rejections.

Gave it a +. Great post. AI analysis 100%. It shouldn't be surprising considering they are software company and overall direction their stock platform has taken.

It is hard to argue against Adobe; I contribute to 5 agencies and most months Adobe generates more revenue than other 4 combined. In addition they have to fight endless streams of content pouring from everywhere. But there are problems. AI is nothing but a dumb tool that can't accomplish everything right; never did and never will.

I repeat again: How did that over-spammed portfolio get accepted. Here's the link again

https://stock.adobe.com/sg/search/images?creator_id=206533842&filters

Please click on it. Scroll down and see all the shells. Who accepted this?? Why don't AI software run against existing portfolios and identifies such things; I am sure there are many. AI still should not reject anything, but notify human who can then easily take action. Why is more information not posted here? When Matt was here at least there was proactive action, and correction when necessary; how there are just announcements, for which chain emails would suffice.

I doubt anything will change. As long as that shell portfolio is still available, for my money there are doing it wrong. Period

pires128 · « **Reply #9 on:** May 04, 2025, 03:48 »

Quote from: zeljkok on May 03, 2025, 12:50

Quote from: Bauman on May 03, 2025, 08:00

I think it's done with an AI analysis.

I don't like the way Adobe Stock has been working lately.

It favors quantity over quality. It favors AI spammers and penalizes traditional photographers and illustrators who spend much time on their creations with absurd rejections.

Gave it a +. Great post. AI analysis 100%. It shouldn't be surprising considering they are software company and overall direction their stock platform has taken.

It is hard to argue against Adobe; I contribute to 5 agencies and most months Adobe generates more revenue than other 4 combined. In addition they have to fight endless streams of content pouring from everywhere. But there are problems. AI is nothing but a dumb tool that can't accomplish everything right; never did and never will.

I repeat again: How did that over-spammed portfolio get accepted. Here's the link again

https://stock.adobe.com/sg/search/images?creator_id=206533842&filters

Please click on it. Scroll down and see all the shells. Who accepted this?? Why don't AI software run against existing portfolios and identifies such things; I am sure there are many. AI still should not reject anything, but notify human who can then easily take action. Why is more information not posted here? When Matt was here at least there was proactive action, and correction when necessary; how there are just announcements, for which chain emails would suffice.

I doubt anything will change. As long as that shell portfolio is still available, for my money there are doing it wrong. Period

we all miss matt.

raul only post stuff and run lol. and his job is to make good contact with contributors.

synthetick · « **Reply #10 on:** May 04, 2025, 06:37 »

Has anyone actually opened a support ticket and complained about the shell portfolio? In my experience Adobe deal swiftly with such portfolios when brought to their attention.

zeljkok · « **Reply #11 on:** May 04, 2025, 12:19 »

Quote from: pires128 on May 04, 2025, 03:48

raul only post stuff and run lol. and his job is to make good contact with contributors.

agreed. Raul might even be AI bot

angelacat · « **Reply #12 on:** May 04, 2025, 12:21 »

Just floating an idea - I wonder what would happen if rather than upload and agencies take a cut, contributors pay the agencies to host their work with full commissions going to the contributor. Just a thought - don't know if it's been tried before.

cobalt · « **Reply #13 on:** May 04, 2025, 15:24 »

Then there is no money for advertising, a sales team, a legal team, an editor team. Running after customers costs a lot of money.

There are many platforms where you can pay to host your content. But then there is no quality moderation, nobody reads releases or checks for copyright problems.

Customers don't like to buy on these sites.

You can always try to run your own webshop from your website. Often in addition to agencies. It works for some, but many give up because dealing with all the questions customers have is a time waste.

There is a huge machine behind the shop window surface. Many creators underestimate how hard agencies have to work.

mino216 · « **Reply #14 on:** May 05, 2025, 04:42 »

Quote from: angelacat on May 04, 2025, 12:21

Just floating an idea - I wonder what would happen if rather than upload and agencies take a cut, contributors pay the agencies to host their work with full commissions going to the contributor. Just a thought - don't know if it's been tried before.

You would die of the amount of work, time and money you would have to invest. What about advertising, making deals with other companies, what about lawyers? Not only in these deals but in some copyright problems, you never know when someone would like to take down the images because of some ridiculous reason that their "thing" is on the photo (and that is the better option, lawsuit is the worse one). Would you really like to deal with every single issue that can emerge? No, thanks. That is suicide.

The agencies are huge "bumper" for you. Will not save you everytime from every problem, but still it is a huge help in majority of the cases. For example, there are 1700 people employed in Shutterstock, you really do not want to do all their work on your own.

cobalt · « **Reply #15 on:** May 05, 2025, 04:50 »

Quote from: zeljkok on May 04, 2025, 12:19

Quote from: pires128 on May 04, 2025, 03:48

raul only post stuff and run lol. and his job is to make good contact with contributors.

agreed. Raul might even be AI bot

Also what happened to Michelle, she was fantastically helpful and seems to have disappeared from discord.

I like Raul a lot, but I understand that he must be very frustrated. With random reviews, you can no longer advise creators, or look for problems in a file.

If acceptance suddenly goes from 90% to 10% but you do a search by newest and see all kinds of crap coming in, there is nothing you can say.

He cannot complain in public about Adobe, but he what is happening is wrong.

Surprised he is still there. The community is spiraling downwards and adobe is telling them it is all their fault.

I would also interpret lack of adobe mods engagement as a bad sign that worse things are coming.

They have doubled down that creators are at fault. They are perfectly fine with an unhappy creator community, which I find very weird.

A simple stern upload limit would have easily stopped uploading mass duplicates and in combo with normal quality reviews, most problems would have been solved.

angelacat · « **Reply #16 on:** May 05, 2025, 06:11 »

Fair enough on my comment on stock business model - points taken. I guess agencies would have to provide and bake in marketing, sales, customer service into the price for hosting your content, which would have course increase hosting costs to contributors.

"suggested on the Discord server that you vary the titles and keywords. If you're submitting multiple assets on the same theme, don't just copy titles and keywords from one asset to all of the others." - posted on Adobe Stock contributors.

Blackbox added this policy to their submission rules to prevent too many similars. It does make sense as if you are doing wide, medium, close up, panning, zoom ins etc then by Adobe definitions they are different.

Sometimes I just switch composition about so although I don't intentionally spam it is a grey area what agencies see as similar and what I see as similar. I like to offer end buyers a choice but wouldn't want them trawling through 50 similar shots either.

Injustice for all · « **Reply #17 on:** May 05, 2025, 06:52 »

Quote from: zeljkok on May 04, 2025, 12:19

Quote from: pires128 on May 04, 2025, 03:48

raul only post stuff and run lol. and his job is to make good contact with contributors.

agreed. Raul might even be AI bot

in my opinion Raul should read the entire works of Homer in livestream in ancient greek language then maybe we can start believing that he is not a bot!

Between one rendering and another,I did some research on the Adobe Stock library,and the problem seems to be more present on searches with more words.

I say this,without actually knowing if there are specific reasons why research must work this way,anyway I'll give you some examples,purely random and just invented,without showing any screens because I don't want to show anyone's content and it's certainly not up to me to say if it's right or wrong.

for example if I write in the search: "golden plate" It is very likely that the first content shown is a simple plate,not gold in color,just as there will always be dozens of results on the first page where there is nothing golden.

In my opinion this can be improved,because I searched for "golden plate" so I'm not interested in a normal white plate or any other color.

I'm looking for: "woman suitcase"

It is likely that the search shows as first result woman with her face in close-up against a plane,without any suitcase,with several similar results which is not what I was looking for,because at most a woman's suitcase is acceptable,or rather a woman with a suitcase at the airport or station,but certainly not a close-up of a woman's face in "travel" related just because the word "suitcase" is travel realated.

I believe this is because the person who sent the close-up image of the woman's face against the plane wrote "suitcase" among the first words.

I think I've made my point a little clearer,and I repeat,I didn't look for these words,they're just examples.

Now I don't know if there are specific reasons why search must work this way,or if it can be improved.

in my personal opinion,the search will be improved with AI,from what I see it still follows single words,but this will probably change in the future.

mino216 · « **Reply #18 on:** May 05, 2025, 07:59 »

Quote from: angelacat on May 05, 2025, 06:11

Fair enough on my comment on stock business model - points taken. I guess agencies would have to provide and bake in marketing, sales, customer service into the price for hosting your content, which would have course increase hosting costs to contributors.

They already do. This is what is covered in their commissions. No need to reivent the wheel. See the Shutterstock. Their revenue was 242.6M, net income 18.7M. There is not much space to increase payment for contributors if it should survive financially. For example, cost of revenue is 101M (majority of this will be probably payments to contributors, maybe covering others), 53M was sales and marketing (that mean all relationships with buyers), 20M product development (website and so on), 58M to general and administrative. It is not so easy as it seems. These other costs (administrative, sales, marketing, IT infrastructure,...) will not disappear so easily. Maybe it can optimize them a little bit more but I would not expect miracles.

And even in your model, you would still have to pay these things. You can pay them through the commission as of now, hosting prices (your solution) or by yourself (also your solution if even more extreme). I would prefer commission as the easiest and most predictable option (hosting would cost you money even if you will not sold anything). Now, you pay only in the case you have sold something.

angelacat · « **Reply #19 on:** May 05, 2025, 08:17 »

mino216 - it was more of solution to the exessive spamming - will people pay for more space just to host 100s of the same photo? But if it's been tried then no guess it's not an solution.

mino216 · « **Reply #20 on:** May 05, 2025, 12:53 »

Quote from: angelacat on May 05, 2025, 08:17

mino216 - it was more of solution to the exessive spamming - will people pay for more space just to host 100s of the same photo? But if it's been tried then no guess it's not an solution.

They will probably not. But the problem is that such a site will also miss a lot of images of photographers who do not spam which will make it less attractive for buyers as well from an opposite reason (for example, I would not upload there). Your solution is sometimes used in few sites, usually for real products with these photos, not so much for digital licences. But then you cannot expect microstock volumes of sales (but also not their low prices). I prefer relatively stable income from microstock, not some crazy high licence once a year, if any. Better photographer than me, who have better images, more appropriate to be sold through these channels, can have different preferences.

zeljkok · « **Reply #21 on:** May 05, 2025, 13:16 »

Quote from: Injustice for all on May 05, 2025, 06:52

in my opinion Raul should read the entire works of Homer in livestream in ancient greek language then maybe we can start believing that he is not a bot!

LOL. I think there might even not be "Raul". Instead bot makes these announcement posts, under Raul moniker. Account is monitored by human once in a blue moon, but that's all there is to it.

I don't even have a problem with it. Just like reviews, my problem is lack of transparency. Just say what it is. I.e. "We'll make automated announcement posts here in MSG under the Raul account". "Our AI engine is responsible for pre-screening of submitted content, which directly impacts time of wait". Etc etc

Real issue is in my opinion that they are facing overwhelming influx of content, hugely increased by AI spam. Shutterstock also went through something similar in their high. Adobe is by far the biggest earner out there for most contributors and everyone wants to submit to Adobe. So, as most software companies would do, they relegate solutions to AI, and you have situation we have today.

Injustice for all · « **Reply #22 on:** May 05, 2025, 14:31 »

I'm happy with Adobe,my only problem is that it's probably the problem of many,is that I would like to earn more,but I also take my responsibilities for this.

I also think that all of us,including myself,sometimes complain a little too much.

we all complain about pretty much everything in turn!

when there was the contributor bonus,for example,there was a general complaint because 150 contents approved the previous year were needed.

the truth is that if you haven't uploaded even 150 contents in a year,it means that either you're not interested,or you already earn enough and you're not interested,and then what are you supposed to do with free software if you haven't uploaded even 150 contents?

and yet people complained.

So,let's stop blaming Adobe for everything and take responsibility for ourselves too.

First of all,this attitude only makes things worse,and then let's remember that Mat is supervising the content review,certainly with experts who know better than us what they are doing,and then in my opinion,given the situation,I don't see what else could have been done,in this way the spam is finished.

could a limit have been set before?probably yes...BUT,there is a big "but",There's a lot going on,and we don't have the big picture,while Adobe does.

I have an idea for which certain choices were made,but it is also useless to say them because they are simply my ideas.

I'm just saying,let's try to give the benefit of the doubt more,and it seems to me that all things considered,Adobe is doing the best it can,given the overall picture.

as I have said other times,I repeat it again:

are there problems?yes.

will there be more problems in the future?yes.

the important thing is the will to solve this problems,and to me,it seems that Adobe does nothing but announce new features and changes,improvements continuously.

then as far as I'm concerned,I hope to be able to continue this job,which I like,I hope to be able to earn at least a good part-time salary in a short time from now,but in any case I think I'll find out soon,as I already said I think that in a couple of months from now,I can start to have a clearer idea about this.

cobalt · « **Reply #23 on:** May 05, 2025, 15:21 »

The very abrupt change to random ai reviews is a very serious problem and I have never seen anything like it in 20 years of doing stock.

So complaining about abrupt changes with no real communication or feedback is perfectly sensible.

Also the only way to make them understand that we are displeased and this is not an acceptable situation.

So keep complaining, nothing about these abrupt roulette reviews is normal.

WendyT · « **Reply #24 on:** May 05, 2025, 16:07 »

I think we have all been hit with the "similar" rejections lately. For many of us it is obvious that it has not been compared to images in our own portfolios, so it must be comparing to the larger collection. If this is the way things are going then anything new will always be rejected for similar as there are so many images of just about every topic on Adobe. I dont see how this will keep the collection "fresh".

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Author Topic: Update on Similar Refusals (Read 4600 times)

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