MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: volk65 on May 15, 2011, 05:11
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The reasons to cancel excluvity are well listed here in different topics and I was thinking about it for some time. My acceptance rates was the last blow.
Irrationality behind rejections were beaten to death here but I'd like to share my own experience:
The same 3d scene, the same render and light settings, sometimes the same camera angle, just a different angle or minor change, some are accepted, some rejected for not artistic but quality reasons. For example, I designed a building with Ionic columns and wrote Bank, Government and University on it. With a connection to a laptop they became e-banking, e-government and e-learning concepts. Out of 6-7 combinations with these, only 2 are accepted, the rest are rejected for "jagged edges." There is no jagged edges of course, I always use optimum sampling settings and high polygon counts for the cost of long render times. But let's assume it is true, so how the other two were accepted?
I think I'll have more chance on other sites and it will already balance the equation.
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You should post an image so we can see if the comments were justified. Borderline images tend to get some rejected, some accepted.
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The reasons to cancel excluvity are well listed here in different topics and I was thinking about it for some time. My acceptance rates was the last blow.
Irrationality behind rejections were beaten to death here but I'd like to share my own experience:
The same 3d scene, the same render and light settings, sometimes the same camera angle, just a different angle or minor change, some are accepted, some rejected for not artistic but quality reasons. For example, I designed a building with Ionic columns and wrote Bank, Government and University on it. With a connection to a laptop they became e-banking, e-government and e-learning concepts. Out of 6-7 combinations with these, only 2 are accepted, the rest are rejected for "jagged edges." There is no jagged edges of course, I always use optimum sampling settings and high polygon counts for the cost of long render times. But let's assume it is true, so how the other two were accepted?
I think I'll have more chance on other sites and it will already balance the equation.
I personally don't think it wise to go exclusive at any site, but regarding your images...
if you are submitting a bunch with only slight camera angles or minor changes, I can see why some might get rejected. If you have 10 images with only MINOR changes, you should choose the best one or two and only submit them. Before others jump in and start talking about similars being helpful for the designer, I agree, but the keyword you are mentioning is MINOR. If by different angle you mean front view, side view, back view, top view, etc., meaning totally different angles, then I share your disgust with the rejections, assuming all other technical aspects of the image are correct.
As far as your question "But let's assume it is true, so how the other two were accepted?"...you might as well not even worry about the answer. It is what it is. Either go exclusive, accept the rejections, learn from then, resubmit to scout, or as Sean says, post an image so others might help you understand, or give up exclusivity, submit to others sites where you might get some of the others accepted.
But my first paragraph above should be applied to all sites. Most are cracking down on MINOR CHANGE similars anyway.
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Congratulations on your independence and good luck!
They accept what they want and for the rest its hard to find reasons :)
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The reasons to cancel excluvity are well listed here in different topics and I was thinking about it for some time. My acceptance rates was the last blow.
Irrationality behind rejections were beaten to death here but I'd like to share my own experience:
The same 3d scene, the same render and light settings, sometimes the same camera angle, just a different angle or minor change, some are accepted, some rejected for not artistic but quality reasons. For example, I designed a building with Ionic columns and wrote Bank, Government and University on it. With a connection to a laptop they became e-banking, e-government and e-learning concepts. Out of 6-7 combinations with these, only 2 are accepted, the rest are rejected for "jagged edges." There is no jagged edges of course, I always use optimum sampling settings and high polygon counts for the cost of long render times. But let's assume it is true, so how the other two were accepted?
I think I'll have more chance on other sites and it will already balance the equation.
Don't take it your hart, since most of Istock 'inspectors' are dilettants. I have a decent (around 70%) acceptance before anyone comes up with me being spiteful because of severe rejections... But. I had 'isolation' rejections for images that weren't isolated. Fail. I had 'degraded image quality from upsampling' rejections because some pics were slightly larger than what my camera (exif) produces - I extended the white background on some very tight compositions, where the subject was almost touching the edges... of course the images were razor * sharp. Fail. I added a note for the inspector to inform him/her about one of photoshop's most basic functions that even novices know: how you can enlarge image area with the crop tool which includes no upsampling whatsoever. From the answer it was pretty clear that I was communicating with clueless dilettant. It's not just they didn't know about that property of the crop tool, but seemingly didn't even understand it thru my explanation. Double fail: an inspector of digital imagery with hardly any knowledge of photoshop, and lacking the mental abilities to understand a simple explanation. : )) Well trained chimpanzees could do a better job than that.
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Congratulations on your independence and good luck!
They accept what they want and for the rest its hard to find reasons :)
+1. Good decision.
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I personally don't think it wise to go exclusive at any site, but regarding your images...
if you are submitting a bunch with only slight camera angles or minor changes, I can see why some might get rejected. If you have 10 images with only MINOR changes, you should choose the best one or two and only submit them. Before others jump in and start talking about similars being helpful for the designer, I agree, but the keyword you are mentioning is MINOR. If by different angle you mean front view, side view, back view, top view, etc., meaning totally different angles, then I share your disgust with the rejections, assuming all other technical aspects of the image are correct.
As far as your question "But let's assume it is true, so how the other two were accepted?"...you might as well not even worry about the answer. It is what it is. Either go exclusive, accept the rejections, learn from then, resubmit to scout, or as Sean says, post an image so others might help you understand, or give up exclusivity, submit to others sites where you might get some of the others accepted.
But my first paragraph above should be applied to all sites. Most are cracking down on MINOR CHANGE similars anyway.
Hi cclapper,
I know what you mean but;
1) Sometimes minor changes make a totally different concept (thats why I gave the specific example). Just by changing the name on the building, it can be either e-gov, online banking, or e-learning concept.
2) If "minor" change is the problem, then they should say so, "jagged lines" cannot correct themselves from one image to other while I'm using the same settings and geometries.
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You should post an image so we can see if the comments were justified. Borderline images tend to get some rejected, some accepted.
Hi sjlocke,
To see "jagged lines" I guess I have to send the originals. I don't think it will be appropriate.
I accept that my images can be borderline. I think they are better than many similar ones on the site but let's say mine are borderline because of the elevated quality requirements in the recent years. With this thought in mind, I've found my rejections reasonable for some time. However, "jagged lines" is not a subjective issue. They are either jagged on both images or not.
On a different note, they also rejected some images composed of only 3d text, mentioning ONLY of "jagged lines". They were right, and on 3ds max, I selected the splines, divided them into 25 pieces to make them absolutely smooth, resubmitted them and this time they rejected for that "generic" "artistic reasons". If I knew that more than one problem exist, I wouldn't bother to re-render them for 4-5 hours each. Sometimes they reject for improper keywords, I resubmit them deleting the listed words, then they find another reason to reject. It's really very tiring.
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Completely of the topic, without googling it, can u name the film? I've taken out who says what.
It can all end, right now. Peace. Bliss. Just say it. Cry out mercy.
Mercy...mercy!
Cry out. Just say it. Mercy.
Mercy lad, mercy.
Jesus, mercy.
The prisoner wishes to say a word.
FREEEEE-DOMMMMMM!!!!!
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Completely of the topic, without googling it, can u name the film? I've taken out who says what.
It can all end, right now. Peace. Bliss. Just say it. Cry out mercy.
Mercy...mercy!
Cry out. Just say it. Mercy.
Mercy lad, mercy.
Jesus, mercy.
The prisoner wishes to say a word.
FREEEEE-DOMMMMMM!!!!!
Completely of the topic, without googling it, can u name the film? I've taken out who says what.
It can all end, right now. Peace. Bliss. Just say it. Cry out mercy.
Mercy...mercy!
Cry out. Just say it. Mercy.
Mercy lad, mercy.
Jesus, mercy.
The prisoner wishes to say a word.
FREEEEE-DOMMMMMM!!!!!
:) I googled. Well, relevant.
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I have the same issue with "jagged edges" that I can't see.
It appears to me that it's one of the standard rejection reasons if there are other issues the reasons for rejection (too many similars or LCV).
Some of my renders that I believe would never get through make it and others that are super NOT-jaggy fail for the aforementioned reason.
It's a hit and miss. Keep resubmitting. Eventually they'll get in.
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Completely of the topic, without googling it, can u name the film? I've taken out who says what.
It can all end, right now. Peace. Bliss. Just say it. Cry out mercy.
Mercy...mercy!
Cry out. Just say it. Mercy.
Mercy lad, mercy.
Jesus, mercy.
The prisoner wishes to say a word.
FREEEEE-DOMMMMMM!!!!!
BRAVEHEART!
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...Irrationality behind rejections were beaten to death here but I'd like to share my own experience...
Standards do vary from site to site and collection to collection (even if you ignore the odd spike of weirdness from a new reviewer), but you'll have to get your head around rejections whether you're independent or exclusive. I would grant you that it's always easier if all sites but one accept something because you know it will be on sale vs. not.
I'm now uploading elsewhere again after 2+ years of exclusivity and when SS rejected a file that had been a Vetta image at iStock I could feel the old outrage welling up and I had to just remind myself that these rejections are irrelevant and move on. When you're independent, you will continue to have rejections you don't agree with - potentially more of them too :) (because there are more sites therefore #images x #sites opportunities to be rejected)
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I had 'degraded image quality from upsampling' rejections because some pics were slightly larger than what my camera (exif) produces - I extended the white background on some very tight compositions, where the subject was almost touching the edges... of course the images were razor * sharp. Fail.
Images larger than native camera size are not allowed. Next time don't frame so sharp, or downsize a bit to add white around it.
I added a note for the inspector to inform him/her about one of photoshop's most basic functions that even novices know: how you can enlarge image area with the crop tool which includes no upsampling whatsoever. From the answer it was pretty clear that I was communicating with clueless dilettant. It's not just they didn't know about that property of the crop tool, but seemingly didn't even understand it thru my explanation. Double fail: an inspector of digital imagery with hardly any knowledge of photoshop, and lacking the mental abilities to understand a simple explanation. : )) Well trained chimpanzees could do a better job than that.
What? You can't enlarge an image without upsampling. Using the crop tool to do so is still upsampling. Even a capuchin would know that.
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I had 'degraded image quality from upsampling' rejections because some pics were slightly larger than what my camera (exif) produces - I extended the white background on some very tight compositions, where the subject was almost touching the edges... of course the images were razor * sharp. Fail.
Images larger than native camera size are not allowed. Next time don't frame so sharp, or downsize a bit to add white around it.
I added a note for the inspector to inform him/her about one of photoshop's most basic functions that even novices know: how you can enlarge image area with the crop tool which includes no upsampling whatsoever. From the answer it was pretty clear that I was communicating with clueless dilettant. It's not just they didn't know about that property of the crop tool, but seemingly didn't even understand it thru my explanation. Double fail: an inspector of digital imagery with hardly any knowledge of photoshop, and lacking the mental abilities to understand a simple explanation. : )) Well trained chimpanzees could do a better job than that.
What? You can't enlarge an image without upsampling. Using the crop tool to do so is still upsampling. Even a capuchin would know that.
He wasn't upsampling, he was adding white background with the crop tool. The same thing as adding size in "Canvas size..."
The crop tool doesn't resize the image if you don't type any size information in the boxes.
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Congratulations on your independence and good luck!
They accept what they want and for the rest its hard to find reasons :)
+1. Good decision.
+2 I predict that in the long run you will be very happy with your decision.
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'He wasn't upsampling, he was adding white background with the crop tool. The same thing as adding size in "Canvas size..."
The crop tool doesn't resize the image if you don't type any size information in the boxes.'
Sorry, I thought he was discussing two separate issues the way it was written. Regardless, you can't submit an image larger than your camera native size.
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'Regardless, you can't submit an image larger than your camera native size.
If that's true, it's news to me. A couple of my best sellers on IS are large composites. Many others have had white space added.
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Images larger than native camera size are not allowed. Next time don't frame so sharp, or downsize a bit to add white around it.
Actually i have 2 or 3 dozen that were accepted at 600% - 1200% larger than native...made "mural" like photos...
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'Regardless, you can't submit an image larger than your camera native size.
If that's true, it's news to me. A couple of my best sellers on IS are large composites. Many others have had white space added.
Sigh. A composite or panorama is fine. Enlarging the canvas to add white or upsizing a single image is not.
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Sigh. A composite or panorama is fine.
The problem here is that an image can be rejected if it's bigger than camera's native size - even if it is a composite or panorama or "added white background".
They should really concentrate only how an image LOOKS at 100%, not what it is shot with.
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'Regardless, you can't submit an image larger than your camera native size.
If that's true, it's news to me. A couple of my best sellers on IS are large composites. Many others have had white space added.
Sigh. A composite or panorama is fine. Enlarging the canvas to add white or upsizing a single image is not.
*sympathetic sigh* There's none so deaf as those that will not hear.
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Images larger than native camera size are not allowed. Next time don't frame so sharp, or downsize a bit to add white around it.
Other times I didn't forget to wip the exif, no problemo. Thats all for 'not allowed'. Another fail : ) Btw, I do stiched model shots as wierd as it may sound. Whats the problem with that? Downsizing also degrades image quality combined with getting a smaller file for no reason whatsoever... thats reasonable.
What? You can't enlarge an image without upsampling. Using the crop tool to do so is still upsampling. Even a capuchin would know that.
You just failed at photoshop. The crop tool doesn't sample anything anywhere, thats the 'image size' command.
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Downsizing also degrades image quality
never heard of that, can you please explain why? I do it rarely if I feel that a picture isnīt tack sharp (and cannot do it again) and it does look better "downsized"
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Images larger than native camera size are not allowed. Next time don't frame so sharp, or downsize a bit to add white around it.
Other times I didn't forget to wip the exif, no problemo. Thats all for 'not allowed'. Another fail : ) Btw, I do stiched model shots as wierd as it may sound. Whats the problem with that? Downsizing also degrades image quality combined with getting a smaller file for no reason whatsoever... thats reasonable.
What? You can't enlarge an image without upsampling. Using the crop tool to do so is still upsampling. Even a capuchin would know that.
You just failed at photoshop. The crop tool doesn't sample anything anywhere, thats the 'image size' command.
umm, but it does - you can enter size and resolution into the crop tool and volia - resampled!
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Exactly. I can count numerous newbs on IS who go 'I only used the crop tool, why did it updample?'.
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I personally don't think it wise to go exclusive at any site, but regarding your images...
if you are submitting a bunch with only slight camera angles or minor changes, I can see why some might get rejected. If you have 10 images with only MINOR changes, you should choose the best one or two and only submit them. Before others jump in and start talking about similars being helpful for the designer, I agree, but the keyword you are mentioning is MINOR. If by different angle you mean front view, side view, back view, top view, etc., meaning totally different angles, then I share your disgust with the rejections, assuming all other technical aspects of the image are correct.
As far as your question "But let's assume it is true, so how the other two were accepted?"...you might as well not even worry about the answer. It is what it is. Either go exclusive, accept the rejections, learn from then, resubmit to scout, or as Sean says, post an image so others might help you understand, or give up exclusivity, submit to others sites where you might get some of the others accepted.
But my first paragraph above should be applied to all sites. Most are cracking down on MINOR CHANGE similars anyway.
Hi cclapper,
I know what you mean but;
1) Sometimes minor changes make a totally different concept (thats why I gave the specific example). Just by changing the name on the building, it can be either e-gov, online banking, or e-learning concept.
2) If "minor" change is the problem, then they should say so, "jagged lines" cannot correct themselves from one image to other while I'm using the same settings and geometries.
regardless, increase your antialiasing - soft is better than sharp (when uploading to IS is concerned)
Sean - speaking of monkeys, and completely off topic, thought you might find this funny :) Fixing the web with greasemonkey (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hghpuxCHTc#)
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Sigh. A composite or panorama is fine.
The problem here is that an image can be rejected if it's bigger than camera's native size - even if it is a composite or panorama or "added white background".
They should really concentrate only how an image LOOKS at 100%, not what it is shot with.
Ahhhh...someone gets it!!! ;)
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Downsizing also degrades image quality
never heard of that, can you please explain why? I do it rarely if I feel that a picture isnīt tack sharp (and cannot do it again) and it does look better "downsized"
Take a really sharp image, and make it smaller - it's gonna loose a lot of it's sharpness, because interpolation is involved, just with upsampling. That's why you always need to apply some sharpening to thumbnails f.e.
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Images larger than native camera size are not allowed. Next time don't frame so sharp, or downsize a bit to add white around it.
Other times I didn't forget to wip the exif, no problemo. Thats all for 'not allowed'. Another fail : ) Btw, I do stiched model shots as wierd as it may sound. Whats the problem with that? Downsizing also degrades image quality combined with getting a smaller file for no reason whatsoever... thats reasonable.
What? You can't enlarge an image without upsampling. Using the crop tool to do so is still upsampling. Even a capuchin would know that.
That's juts image size again.
You just failed at photoshop. The crop tool doesn't sample anything anywhere, thats the 'image size' command.
umm, but it does - you can enter size and resolution into the crop tool and volia - resampled!
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You just failed at photoshop. The crop tool doesn't sample anything anywhere, thats the 'image size' command.
Is there a word for a failed attempt to identify a fail?
;D
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Regardless, you can't submit an image larger than your camera native size.
Another good reason to remove any EXIF information which is not absolutely necessary. No camera information - no native format - no rejection for not matching a camera's native format.
There are cameras providing RAW files which have actually more pixels than the "native" JPEGs with in-camera and external software just using a crop. Trying to explain this to istock's inspectors is a waste of time. The oh-so-clever inspectors always responded with "don't upsample". Hilarious. After removing the EXIFs I never got another "upsampled" rejection. Win-win - bigger files, less rejections.
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Regardless, you can't submit an image larger than your camera native size.
Another good reason to remove any EXIF information which is not absolutely necessary. No camera information - no native format - no rejection for not matching a camera's native format.
There are cameras providing RAW files which have actually more pixels than the "native" JPEGs with in-camera and external software just using a crop. Trying to explain this to istock's inspectors is a waste of time. The oh-so-clever inspectors always responded with "don't upsample". Hilarious. After removing the EXIFs I never got another "upsampled" rejection. Win-win - bigger files, less rejections.
Yeah, we've never discussed that before, lol...
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=256012&page=9 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=256012&page=9)
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=226481 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=226481)
etc .... Sounds like you're quite the stock wizard, though.
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You just failed at photoshop. The crop tool doesn't sample anything anywhere, thats the 'image size' command.
Is there a word for a failed attempt to identify a fail?
;D
yes: helix7 : ))
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To make a long story short, if someone can't tell apart an upsampled pic from /pixel sharp, and can't get the concept of how an image becomes larger by expanding the canvas they shouldn't have anything to do digital image inspection, go back flipping burgers or smthng, I dont really care. : ) Also if someone is pushing the concept that an image shouldn't be larger than the cameras native size, altho it's suddenly all ok if you wipe the exif... well, thats just plain stupid : )
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Yeah, we've never discussed that before, lol...
Yep. And yet they (=the inspectors at istock; never had these problems with other agencies) don't get it. If that makes me a stock wizard - so be it.