I have prepared another batch with the principles I posted above. This time adding a few more people.

All ai, I want to see if I can get a workflow with an 80% acceptance rate.

Will report how it goes.

After that it will be mostly camera content, photo/video.

So from in the end 28 uploaded files, 23 got accepted a rate of 82%. all ai.

5 declines, 3 for too similar, one for ip, one for quality.

I also got several ai people accepted.

So my personal take on the too similar decline is that it is a style filter.

It prefers ultrapunchy, cliche superstock content, quite similar to what was popular 2008-2010.

If I upload a more natural, slightly matte vibe...it gets declined.

But the worst is that it has absolutely no idea what sells.

Because the ones declined, at least in my case, are always the potential moneymaker files.

With this in mind, I will try to recreate content and will have to discard most if what I prepared for 2025.

And I wish Adobe had just said plainly what they want, instead of speaking in riddles.

I spent months trying to find very unique content, just to have it declined as too similar.

Will now go back to video and fotos but also for that do more in the supercliche stock style with lots of thumbs up.

,,not similar enough" is a better name for this decline.

And today a people image again declined for too similar...and it was the punchy stock vibe.

So Adobe continues to drive me crazy with this unlogical decline.

Time to do more for other agencies.

I am not going to become one of the 500 files a week uploaders. No way.

Quote from: cobalt on August 15, 2025, 12:02
And today a people image again declined for too similar...and it was the punchy stock vibe.

So Adobe continues to drive me crazy with this unlogical decline.

Time to do more for other agencies.

I am not going to become one of the 500 files a week uploaders. No way.

If your uploads are getting rejected you have to question yourself what you are doing wrong instead of blaming Adobe considering:
"Microstock is dead..again..and again.. and again
I will just focus on content. As long as I see huge gaps, I have a job.
Bye, bye..."

Quote from: SimonSays on August 15, 2025, 20:18
If your uploads are getting rejected you have to question yourself what you are doing wrong

Thats the whole problem.  With absolutely no communication or transparency from Adobe as to how or what the new "similar" policy is and works its impossible to work out what is "wrong" and fix it.

Theyve refused to give any details at all.  To all intents and purposes from a contributor point of view, it seems totally random now.

Quote from: SimonSays on August 15, 2025, 20:18

Quote from: cobalt on August 15, 2025, 12:02
And today a people image again declined for too similar...and it was the punchy stock vibe.

So Adobe continues to drive me crazy with this unlogical decline.

Time to do more for other agencies.

I am not going to become one of the 500 files a week uploaders. No way.

If your uploads are getting rejected you have to question yourself what you are doing wrong instead of blaming Adobe considering:
"Microstock is dead..again..and again.. and again
I will just focus on content. As long as I see huge gaps, I have a job.
Bye, bye..."

my acceptance rate overall is still around 90%, 740 declines with 8150 accepted files

this problem started around 3 months ago and the no logic too similar decline is being expanded to normal vectors, camera video and photos

there have been zero explanations

some creators just resubmit these declined files and then report having 80% accepted

so why were they declined in the first place?

I have uploaded tiny batches and thought I had figured it out and reached 82% acceptance

but now one file with all my perfect new criteria has been declined

I am trying to focus more on other agencies, but the year started at adobe with an excellent increase yoy, 60-80% increase, but now I had to stop uploading, because with random lottery declines i cannot build my portfolio


Mass uploading is impossible for me, so I am really stuck


But this does not mean I will abandon the stock industry. It is a specific problem on Adobe that is affecting many people.

We are hoping it gets resolved in some way eventually.

It is not a reason to declare stock dead, invoke the end of the world and leave the industry.

Hey Big Money totally feel you. Some agencies have tightened QC a lot lately: they're stricter on technical faults (noise, softness, banding, compression), framing issues (letterboxing/pillarboxing), and consistency (FPS, duration, interlacing). A few things that commonly drag acceptance down:

Quick pre-flight for video

Keep clips 5–60s and constant frame rate (23.976/24/25/30/50/60). Variable FPS and 120/240fps get flagged more.

Export to H.264 High Profile, yuv420p (or HEVC), not odd codecs or pixel formats.

Watch bitrate per pixel: roughly 40–60 Mbps (1080p), 80–120 Mbps (4K) is a safe range; super low bpp looks mushy after platform recompression.

No letterbox/pillarbox bars, no black frames at head/tail, no interlacing.

Avoid heavy noise reduction/sharpening that creates halos or plastic skin.

Remove logos/brands; attach model/property releases where needed.

Quick pre-flight for photos

Aim for ≥ 6–12 MP of real detail (not upscaled).

Check sharpness (look at 100% for micro-blur), and histogram clipping (blacks/whites crushed).

Avoid over-compressed JPEGs (tiny file size for big MP = artifacts).

Clean up chromatic aberration/dust; neutral white balance; no trademarks.

To reduce the human grind, we started running everything through a tiny desktop checker we built for our team (now shared publicly): Sentinel. It's not a "magic approval button," but it catches lots of the technical failure cases before upload and saves a ton of time.

What it does (in plain English):

Videos: reads metadata via ffprobe, flags weird FPS, duration outside 5–60s, interlacing, unusual codecs/pixel formats, low bitrate-per-pixel, and even detects letterboxing (it samples frames + uses crop-detect).

Photos: checks megapixels, a sharpness score, black/white clipping, and aggressive compression hints.

Triage: auto-sorts files into Pass / Review / Reject subfolders and generates a clean HTML report so you know why something might fail.

Local & private: runs offline; pause/resume/cancel; multi-language UI.

Using that kind of pre-flight, we were able to push our acceptance up by a noticeable margin (fewer avoidable technical rejects = more approvals). If you're curious, we put it here: https://palestock.gumroad.com/l/sentinel
. No pressure—just sharing what helped us cut the guesswork.

If you don't want a tool, the biggest wins I'd prioritize manually are:

enforce CFR + sane bitrate targets on export,

kill letterbox/pillarbox and interlacing,

keep clips inside 5–60s,

reject your own "almost sharp" images, and

double-check releases/IP.

Hope some of that helps you nudge that 70% into the 80s+ range. Happy uploading!