If you ask me, its all personal preference. I always shoot in RAW; the images that I posted here are from RAW files. The artifacting in the hair I believe is from too much luminance reduction in the sky, not JPEG compression.

The reasons I shoot in RAW is so I have some freedom to push/pull the exposure in post production. RAW allows this to happen, to a certain extent. JPEG "Locks" the luminance values in their place, not allowing the detail to follow exposure values. Now, I do believe, if you are very confident, that it is ok to capture in JPEG, if your happy with the exposure! But, don't expect to try and push/pull the exposure later and keep as much detail.

By the way, I'm a newbie at stock and Istock is the first that I'm applying to. Also, just because Istock rejects for over filtering doesn't mean that the quality is poor. Istock just doesn't want any images that are touched up very much, which I like to do. You can see this in my personal work on my site at www.andrewalwardphoto.com , which I know most of it is probably not suitable for stock.

Anyway, back to the origin of this thread, I'm not sure if you guys have commented on this one yet - http://a3.vox.com/6a011017a94106860e011017a94653860e-pi
I think Adelaide did, but I'm not sure. This one is like I said, no effects, no filtering like you asked for. The only thing I did was pull it from RAW, adjust levels because my exposure was way off, and brought the sky luminance down just a tad, and no sharpening, no Photoshop. Let me know if its any better or worse, and sorry Adelaide if this is the image you were talking about, I appreciate this criticism.

Thanks again.

I'm seeing a lot of artifacting in the hair. There is a lot of blurring on the hands and feet...perhaps that is a filter? Or maybe not fast enough shutter speed? I'm not sure I can tell what's going on.

Well, the blur is motion blur. The fastest I could go was 1/250 because of the off camera hotshoe strobe I was using.

I know that istock, for the most part, does not like filtered images. I know, I have had a few rejects myself. The only people who can get away with it are the big guns (IMHO).

Yes, I am quickly learning this I think. I have been reading other people's posts about "over filtered" rejections, and I am comming to the consensus that an image should not be touched up at all, only minor things such as dust. This saddens me because I love working in Photoshop, but would love to work in stock as well. It seems Istock is extrememly paranoid about filtered images, so much that they reject images for over filtering even when the image had no filtering, not even sharpening, so I have read. I believe their philosophy on a stock photo is that it is "not finished".

Hi everyone,
I applied to Istock and uploaded my 3 samples, and about a week later I got an email back from them saying,

"The iStock administrators have asked that you upload new samples based on the feedback provided below. You're welcome to return in 3 days, upload some new samples and we'll re-process your application.

Comments from the iStockphoto Administrator:

Park_Summer_080607__DSC6515-Edit-3.jpg: Rejected
We found this file over filtered from its original appearance/quality."

The other two had the same rejection reason, and are similar shots. So, I guess I'm looking for a critique, or more clear reasons why it was rejected. I did retouch them, and I think I can see now why they rejected these images, but I wanted to hear your opinions.

Here is one of them:

http://a0.vox.com/6a011017a94106860e011018084438860f-pi

So, by them saying that I should upload new samples, can I just upload my original three, and just not touch them up as much? Or should I upload different shots?

Thanks.