After months of trying to make sense of the "rejection" process, I've finally decided that there IS none.  It all depends on who is reviewing and whether or not the image appeals to said reviewer.  I've re-submitted stuff several times and the images either make it or they don't.  But the "over-filtering" bit with a CPL is especially irritating in a state that has a lot of sun and water.  Whaddo they want us to do, anyway?  Blow out the image entirely?  So......I just shoot, process, submit, etc., and leave my ego offline.   

.... IMHO taking a second look at the file and searching for what is worng or borderline has taugth me more than a year in an photgraphy school. Now and then, in rare ocasions, I haven't been able to find the supposed flaw, .....

true, but what can you conclude when 5 agencies accept and 1 doesnt -- and there's no consistency -- 4 out of 5 accept each image but it's a different agency rejecting

there's almost as much variation among reviewers at  a given site as there is among agencies overall. [with  the exception of FT which rejects wholesale]

so, yes, it's worth trying to see what the reviewer didnt like, but usually not worth the effort of re-processing to try to get it accepted.

I was surprised today when this illustration was rejected at iStockphoto for not being a stock image:




Oh well. Everyone else took it, so it doesn't matter.

IMO not being stock is most annoying. most of my highest earners have received that one (those that are actually on IS have gone through scout).
closely followed by overfiltered...

I too had half a dozen rejections this week for model release which I have never had before (the model release is 18 months old and used on dozens of images)

but I have finally got to the point where I dont care who accepts what and consider that every site has a random element, I heard a while back IS had over 100 reviewers.  getting 100 people to decide on anything, esp whether a photo is any good is impossible, throw into that the mix of abilities between reviewers, personal image styles and you've got a pretty strong random element (unless of course you're a perfect photog / artist

Phil

I wish Istock realized how bad they are hurting themselves with their policies. By rejecting good stock images or severely limiting non-exclusive submissions they are losing millions of dollars. I have a backlog to submit to them of about 3000 images that would have earned THEM at least 10,000 a month. By allowing me to sumbit 30 a week (and I am a diamond member) and rejecting half of it they are robbing themselves of profit.
Most professional stock photographers can not afford being exclusive to any site, especially in microstock. Istock has a few exclusives that submit excellent images (like Lise Gagne), but I wonder if they realize that they would increase their income 10 times by being non-exclusive. In a way we are lucky that people like Lise are not competing with us on other agencies:) However, apart from these select few, most of Istock's exlusive content is not impressive at all - so by limiting good non-exclusive content they are purposefully and consistently decreasing the quality of their library....
The disambiguation system they got from Getty is totally unnecessary pain in the neck and not only useless in increasing search efficiency, it actually hurts it. I mean, look where this "wonderful" system got Getty itself and others that tried to adopt it (like Photoshelter that just went under).
And this is all too bad, providing that Istock was a pioneer of microstock industry, but looks like it is now is being strangled by their own corporate inefficiency, bureaucracy and shortsighted decisions.

Not that it is my image, or any of my business:-), but couldn't help myself... The TV design to simplistic?... What about those amazingly complex photos of the calendar pages that you have recently got approved on Istock? I mean, wow....

If you want a critique of that TV, I'd say you need to work on it more.  It looks like a black rectangle with a blue rectangle, a curvy line, and oval and another square underneath.  Too simplistic.  I know the other sites will accept almost any illustration, but iStock likes their submissions to look like you spent a little more time on the design. 

Same for that universe/earth picture.  The styles of the background and the planet just don't mesh at all.  You've got this somewhat realistic background, and then the shiny plastic earth with no clouds.

I don't think those rejections are at all surprising.  Discouraging to you though, yes.

Microstock, in itself is very simplistic. There are some complex images to be sure but for the most part I don't see a lot of ground shuttering imagery. It's good, it's just not complex for the most part. And I agree that iS is shooting itself in the foot. And I don't really give a * except that I miss a lot of opportunities to make money. This should be obvious. Who doesn't want the best chance to make as much money as possible? What's interesting is the production companies that are coming into microstock, Exactly zero of them will go exclusive with IS, In the past it didn't much matter. But now with more and more really good producers the disparity of collections will grow and it will grow quickly as these  companies only submit 15 or 20 images a week to IS and several hundred or a thousand to the others. I see the IS collection eventually being too limiting to be effective. By then we'll be seeing rejections for artifacts in model releases or some equally inane thing.

I wish Istock realized how bad they are hurting themselves with their policies. By rejecting good stock images or severely limiting non-exclusive submissions they are losing millions of dollars. I have a backlog to submit to them of about 3000 images that would have earned THEM at least 10,000 a month. By allowing me to sumbit 30 a week (and I am a diamond member) and rejecting half of it they are robbing themselves of profit.
Most professional stock photographers can not afford being exclusive to any site, especially in microstock. Istock has a few exclusives that submit excellent images (like Lise Gagne), but I wonder if they realize that they would increase their income 10 times by being non-exclusive. In a way we are lucky that people like Lise are not competing with us on other agencies:) However, apart from these select few, most of Istock's exlusive content is not impressive at all - so by limiting good non-exclusive content they are purposefully and consistently decreasing the quality of their library....
The disambiguation system they got from Getty is totally unnecessary pain in the neck and not only useless in increasing search efficiency, it actually hurts it. I mean, look where this "wonderful" system got Getty itself and others that tried to adopt it (like Photoshelter that just went under).
And this is all too bad, providing that Istock was a pioneer of microstock industry, but looks like it is now is being strangled by their own corporate inefficiency, bureaucracy and shortsighted decisions.

Such over simplification and hyperbole followed by snide comments hardly sheds much light on the subject.

To give credit where credit is due I had 4 of 4 files come back from Scout as overturned and were accepted. I'll certainly make more use of Scout in the future.

Don't waste your time with Scout. Even if the rejection is overturned that file will be buried so deep that no buyer will find it. It all got to do with the time that the file is submitted and the number of views and downloads that it receives in a given time period. A file that only appear online weeks after it was submitted will be heavily penalized by the search algorithm because it received no views and downloads during this time. It takes a long time for Scout to respond to a request for a re-evaluation. The time period between initial submission and final acceptance can be many weeks and that file will disappear in the dark depths of IS. This is one of the big advantages that exclusives have. Their review time is much shorter than those of non-exclusives and their images appear much quicker online which should benefit them in searches.

Wow!  They seem relevant to me, with the exctption of {Clean (good condition)} and they probably had tagged that one represent something like clean used car.

I had an image of a beach sunset with purple coulds rejected for one single word: Cloud

wow, by the sounds of things here, IS is not building a strong foundation of fans here. my problem with IS isn't on keywords, although i do have problems with that too. i eliminate lots of "irrelevant " keywords, and i end up with "not enough" keywords.
but in essence, my rejections were mostly due to "over-processed". even that, i am confused as i shoot RAW and only "processed" them in ORF stage, and a bit of levels. nothing more.
anyway, i have so little with IS, i don't think it even matters anymore.

This thread is becoming 'over the top' comical.

Is it possible that some of the reviewers do not understand English?  Could be getting rejections because we need to enter keywords in some other language.