I am new to microstock and I have a question. I have taken a photo in a public park a few days ago with a beautiful flower bed and pavilion. There are everywhere rather big dry leaves on the grass in front of the pavilion. Do I need to clone them all away or would that ruin the quality of the image? Shall I leave it natural as it is. If I would sell it as a print on canvas I would have to remove the leaves. I don't know about microstock. Thank you for all your answers in advance.

Thank you. Good to know. But what if I do want to upload it? Would I have to clone the leaves away? I started doing it but when I zoomed in I didn't like how the grass looked. Mind you, I didn't clone, I used the blemish removal tool. I just want to know in general if the leaves would have to go. Brilliant. What to shoot then? They are thousands of food photos on the websites as well. I have the feeling they have enough images of everything.

I would clone out the pavilion as it distracts from the dry leaves.

Most successful microstockers try to produce high volumes and they will try to limit the time spent on post production. Therefore if you are unable to determine whether the image would be better with or without out the big dry leaves, then send the image without removing the leaves and see if it gets accepted. If it does get accepted then wait 6 months and see how often the image has been downloaded and see if you are happy with the amount of downloads for the amount of time spent on it. If the amount of downloads fall well below your expectation then it would likely not make a massive difference by removing the leaves, more likely that your image is not in high demand. The point is, focus on minimising pp and sending as much as possible.

You can but it means you have to get the lighting etc even more "spot on" than shooting in Raw. You can achieve nearly as good results in JPEG with good preparation and execution its just harder to rescue shots that are not quite there.