Hey there.  Quick question for you, what method are you using to isolate your images?

I am having the same problem. They accept almost all my other photos, but the isolations are much harder to get accpeted. They always have that same reason...jagged or rough edges. They almost always say "can resubmit" but it's just not worth redoing most of the isolations just for the one site. All the other sites accept them.  I'm not sure what I can do to improve it...maybe you all can help.  Here is how I shot mine.

I have a small studio so I only have about 8 to 10 feet separation between the background and the subject. I then have two background strobes to overexpose the background and two more for the subject. The main problem with this is I keep getting too much light bouncing off the background and overexposing the edges of my subject and I seen to loose alot of color and detail....if I turn down the background lights then I get that "almost white background" and that works to some extent..I just use the pen tool to finish the isolation (at about 800%)...but it doesn't work with hair...I get a slightly off white areas inbetween the hair...and I'm not sure how to get rid of it.  If I overexpose like I want on the background the details of hair are just overpowered and gone.  I'm sure an additonal 5 feet or so from the background would help...but it's not an option.  I have also started using the pen tool almost all the time as my isolation tool. I have tried the extract and background remover..but the results are not very good compared to the pen tool...and also the pen tool leaves the path for the designer.

so my questions

1) Can I get good isolations with only 8 to 10 feet of separation ? If so..what am I doing wrong?
2) is the pen tool the best tool to use for isolations?
3) is there a better way? How do you do it...?

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?text=&action=file&filetypeID=0&s1=0&username=perkmeup&MinWidth=&MinHeight=&color=&form_cs_nw=xxx&form_cs_n=xxx&form_cs_ne=xxx&form_cs_w=xxx&form_cs_center=xxx&form_cs_e=xxx&form_cs_sw=xxx&form_cs_s=xxx&form_cs_se=xxx&form_cs_tolerance=1&x=25&y=6

Tom

I'm not sure if this will help but it helped me.  I noticed this happening to me some times but I never could figure out why.  Since I had never heard of a clipping path before reading the iStock article on it last year I figured I might be missing a step.  I went back to that article, found here - http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=89, and started following all the steps outlined there.  When I do that I get no jaggies.  I'm guessing I was just missing a step somewhere in my haste before.  Try it and let us know how it goes.  If I'm telling you something you already know, please accept my apologies.  It just helped me.

the 1 px feather works for me too.

Funny thing is that a couple of my shots were refused as "poor isolation" when I was actually in a professional studio and didn't have to cut out anything! Hahaha! All my images had a perfect white BG. That was the funniest. 

Tom, if you are still interested, i recomend you this tutorial: http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov
Remember is not just because is what they want, it's for you, what you learn from this has no price.

Thanks for the link. Amazing. But I think this illustrates my point. I'm a photographer. This kind of talent is for the graphic designer to develop. It's their JOB and they get paid for it. I would rather spend the extra time it takes to produce an image like this (which may or may not sell a few extra times) taking more photos. 

The problem with this thought process is the designer is thinking "Why should I have to isolate this guy's work?  There's plenty of others out there that are already isolated.  They don't pay me to do his work.  I'll just buy from someone else."  Unless there's an ugly, cluttered background to start with, isolating is fairly simple and straightforward.  There's a couple of different ways to proceed, depending on what the background is to begin with.  I personally prefer to get as close as I can in the camera, and then use the white eyedropper in levels.  If the background is too dark, I'll use the magic wand with a tolerance between 1 and 5 percent.  Color the selection white (or black).  Then zoom in and clean up any jaggies with the blur tool or I may need to spot hand color with the paint brush.  Then blur all the edges and I'm done.  There are several other ways to go as well.  Some take longer than others, but if you want an isolation, that's what you need to do.  Using this, I've yet to have an isolation rejected at IS (or elsewhere for that matter).  Wish I could say that about some of my other images. 

the 1 px feather works for me too.

Funny thing is that a couple of my shots were refused as "poor isolation" when I was actually in a professional studio and didn't have to cut out anything! Hahaha! All my images had a perfect white BG. That was the funniest. 

I've had that, too. I did a series of shots of a guy making various hand signals. The BG was perfect white (blown out). They rejected about half of them for 'poor isolation' where I hadn't done any manual isolation at all. It would have been almost impossible, what with his hair and stuff.

I just took it on the chin     If they don't want 'em they don't want 'em.

Quote from: Tomboy2290 on February 28, 2007, 21:14

As I explained, the isolations were perfect at 0 tolerance before I compressed them, but when I reopened them and checked them at 100% the jaggies where there (only one or  two pixels at random around the object). No one as yet has been able to provide an explanation as to why that is happening, and i can still only assume it is the compression/decompression of certain colours.

Haven't you explained it yourself here? Compression could well be the problem. The compression formula looks for edges. It does this because large areas of the same colour (like the white background) can be saved with minimal bits - it only has to specify 'same' ... 'same' ... 'same' ... for pixel after pixel ... until it gets to an edge.

Are you working in JPEG and saving in JPEG?

What happens if you work in TIFF, which doesn't compress, and then only save as a JEPG as the very last step before submitting?

erm um der How does that help? once compressed with jpeg even once the damage is done isn't it??? So when  its opened again ..... 

anyways, if I'm not mistaken, when you open a file that has been compressed with any algorithm - jpeg or zip or tiff (which is still compression BTW tho lossless) or whatever, it decompresses to memory and is then a BITMAP, so any work done to it is done on it as a BITMAP then when you save it as a jpeg it is compressed again. I get your point about compressing and re compressing multiple times but  um ...  I'm not that much of a cabbage head thanks. This whole thing has come full circle so I refer back to my original post and still say that whoever is reviewing isolations that have been jpged and expecting them to pick out clean with a 0 tolerance is just expecting the impossible, now if we could upload files in TIFF or PNG format that would solve it ...

Oh well I'm over it ... moving on ... thanks people

I'm going crazy trying to get my isolations accepted at iStock.
All of a sudden I'm  getting rejected for jagged edges.  I think one of the reviewers there is checking the isolations with zero tolerance. Thats plain silly. Even the very cleanest of isolations, once they are compressed, will show slight jagginess at 100% with zero tolerance, so I think its impossible to upload a jpeg-ed isolation that would be clean enough under those conditions.

I have the same problem and no solution. I'd posted a topic on IS forum - no response.
On SS forum I had some responses but no real solution. Here's a link to SS forum topic:
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16004

Quote from: Tomboy2290 on February 26, 2007, 19:52

I'm going crazy trying to get my isolations accepted at iStock.
All of a sudden I'm  getting rejected for jagged edges.  I think one of the reviewers there is checking the isolations with zero tolerance. Thats plain silly. Even the very cleanest of isolations, once they are compressed, will show slight jagginess at 100% with zero tolerance, so I think its impossible to upload a jpeg-ed isolation that would be clean enough under those conditions.

I have the same problem and no solution. I'd posted a topic on IS forum - no response.
On SS forum I had some responses but no real solution. Here's a link to SS forum topic:
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16004

Thank you, thank you, at last someone understands what I'm talking about! And its not just me!

Just a quick update on this thread because I'm sure other people are still having problems with this issue. I got totally fed up with having my isolations rejected, usually within one batch, but not every batch, so I decided to send some of my rejected files to Scout for a second opinion. Every file that I have since sent to Scout has been approved by him .... its a tedious situation but if you believe your isolations are up to standard and they aren't getting passed by the reviewers, send 'em in to Scout!

If you're shooting on white and have your incamera white balance set correctly then why are you doing all the PS pen work? The only tools I use in PS for isolations are the clone tool (for imperfections in the subject) and the curves level to fix white balance when it is a little off. Other than that I just save as a jpeg and submit. I only have a few rejections of isolations and those are for trademark, etc.

I couldn't imagine putting in all the work to isolate using the pen tool.

Hi, I took a look at your portfolio at IS. Most of your isolations have backgrounds of various shades of graduated grey, and are not isolated on white. They are not really true isolations, but if you use the pen tool and create a true ffffff background it might boost your sales! Thats why I do all the work with a pen tool ... it makes the pics sell better