Apart from in-camera processing (saturation and sharpening, which should be turned down to zero) the major source of artifacts (and noise) is incorrect exposure.

If you are getting a lot of rejections due to artifacts I suggest you spend some time examining how you achieve exposure with your camera (your camera shouldn't be producing these problems).

Learn to 'shoot to the right' and 'shoot to the left'.  Also, carry out some experiments to check that your camera does not habitually over or under expose.  I discovered months ago that my Nikon D200 underexposes by about half a stop.  A good way to check is to take a picture of something white, using your camera's histogram to get the shot exactly at the right side (RGB 255).  Then, have a look at that same picture with the eyedropper tool in photoshop and see what readings you get.  When my Nikon shows 255, photoshop shows it as about 248, confirming that the Nikon is incorrect.

Once you get exposure right you'll have little need to use levels and curves and you'll find that artifacts and noise will magically disappear.

Might not work for you, but worth a try.

I am experimenting with this.

In October I 'donated' 48 images to the free section at 123RF and rotated them through various donation periods.

All my donated images came to an end on Nov 1st.  I intend not to offer any donated images for the month of November.

So far my income in November is about the same as it was in October at the same stage in the month.

Early days, but the evidence so far is that withdrawing the free images has had no impact on portfolio sales.

Well the offending photographers have had their images removed and accounts suspended.  Swift and decisive action by iStock.

StockXpert seem to be making very good progress.  I have not noticed any reduction in sales (money) due to the subscription service.

Note that the preferred search algorithm (most popular) has an increased emphasis on 'newest first' rather like the most popular default at SS, so uploading regularly is important.  In fact when I looked at my own portfolio recently on a most popular search, new files with zero downloads are shown as 'more popular' than older files with ten or twenty sales; this emphasises how important the 'newness' factor has become in the 'most popular' algorithm.

I have to say that I don't really see why 123RF felt the need to change the site again - I thought the existing design was good, simple and fast.  This seems to me like change for change sake.

The existing site worked well.  Now I cannot see any link for images downloaded, and when I tried to post about this in their forum the 'post reply' links wouldn't work.

I'd rather have seen 123RF invest this money in increased marketing and customer generation.

It is not unusual for corporations to move registered subsidiaries offshore for tax and legal reasons, particularly if it is anticipated that the subsidiary's operations will take place in several countries and currencies.

And being owned by a Trust is also nothing new and certainly not suspicious.

And just to confirm that this is just a technical or tax efficient operation, the SV web site still has 'empowered by Corbis' slapped all over it......

'Hope' does not lead to good sales.

I don't contribute to Albumo, but I imagine they have categories for a reason......

Your problem is probably that you've got the manufacturer's name slap bang in the middle of the clock!

Day or two.  Sometimes three or four.

Does anyone know of agencies that are foreign language only and specific to individual countries?

I know Freezing contributes to a German only agency.

I am interested in translating my stuff into French and possibly Japanese on the basis that there are likely to be large successful agencies in those countries servicing only the local market.

Google search for stock photos in French hasn't helped much.

Well I should think about 400 of those views are my own - every time I have to add keywords one by one to replace the words the SV 'experts' strip from my uploads it adds a view to the image.......

Where do I find these numbers please?