get rid of blue background on first image, and it will be OK. second one is useless.

I don't think that it's useless either

I do not think the other one is so useless. I have sold a very similar one several times.

I really can't see any use for either of them, and that's along the lines of the iStock thinking, imo.

we can say we like or dislike all we want till we're blue in the face (same colour as your picture ), but i get rejections like that from DST and BigStock, and really,
there isn't anything you can do, but give it to another site.
sure SS and IS sell more, but at this time , you cannot predict who is going to win anymore.
just submit to other sites.

I think you'd be better selling the original image - designers could do that in a few seconds in photoshop.

i agree completely, and another point is that even IF a designer COUD create the same thing, the real question is whether they would even think of it!  the originality of the design is what will sell it.

similarly, with photos, even though designers COULD do the tweeking, how many are going to see the same crop you do, especially when they're only simming thru thumbnails.   eg, an image of elephants at  a water hole, and a cropped version of same image that zooms in on the head.  best, of course, if you take both shots in camera, but it's often not possible.

Quote from: GeoPappas on October 23, 2008, 07:11

They state that they don't want edited images, but if you look at their top sellers many of them are heavily edited. This also shows that some reviewers at IS are ignoring their own rules and allowing specific images that have been heavily edited to get through their inspection process.

Right.  They're selective.  One great edited file doesn't mean that all edited files should get in or are great.

Sorry, but that is incorrect.  IS has stated many times that they don't want heavily edited images.  Yet some of those highly edited images magically seem to make it past the inspection process.  I wonder why???  Hmm!

get rid of blue background on first image, and it will be OK. second one is useless.

Why is it any more useless than a picture of, say, a brick wall?

Surely, a judgement as to whether it's useless or not rests with the buyer. There may well be someone out there who wants exactly that image.

IMO the 'limited commercial value' rejection is a catch-all for "Personally, I don't like this image, but there's nothing wrong with it and I can't reject it for any other reason."

I think SS (and probably most sites) have a good idea of how many times an image must sell to payback their investment in it (reviewer time, storage, etc.) and so reviewers base their LCV rejections on that number of DLs.  Doesn't mean it won't sell at all.  It is just their opinion that it won't sell enough to be worth keeping.

I see this being true for sites like DT and IS, but not SS. SS will actually lose money if a single picture is downloaded many times, cause they have to pay out royalties. I wonder if they have a different criteria, something like trying to judge the "appeal" and "usefulness" of a picture to its customer base. SS is a very strange business model indeed.

I think you'd be better selling the original image - designers could do that in a few seconds in photoshop.

That's the general response I got when I started and asked "is this something I could sell as stock". 100% of the answers said No!



Funny part is I agree and haven't bothered doing anything else like this. I carry a copy in the print folder and have sold two copies that people had framed and hung on their walls.  I'd have to sell this image over 300 times MS to get the same profit. I'm limiting it to 25 copies at 8 x10.

Maybe mine is a little more specialized than the examples at the start of the thread. I don't see why the sky couldn't be used as a button or something, but the effect is easier to produce, because the sky is everywhere?

The one on the left may represent the concept better, yin and yang gradually trade places with each other, like day and night. Drop the blue background sounds like good advise. The Sun and Moon are the dots of the symbolism.

Maybe I should try again. It isn't like every photo lends itself to this kind of manipulation and most don't turn out well unless they have the right colors and elements.

If IS and SS don't want your photo/illustrations or whatever someone might call them, and they sell elsewhere, that's the way it goes. Sell them on the other sites.