Over the past year and easily 6-7 attempts, I've been unable to get my first time photos through Shutterstock's reviews. Each time it's like discovering new and exciting ways in which I can be arbitrarily rejected for images that were in previous attempts deemed acceptable. Focus issues where there is no focus issue, title issues where there is no title issue. Even being told that names of cities should be in English! Buenos Aires? That's Spanish, I think you mean "Good Airs". Ugh. But I'm not here only to complain. My most recent attempts have been solely focused on editorials, as that's the bulk of the work I do anyway and now it's begun to feel like a battle of the wills. Last night, I took the hour and a half to meticulously created captions for each of my ten submissions. I followed every instruction given to the letter. I checked, double-checked, triple-checked, every single one and I submitted. Only to get this email today.

"We�re sorry but your content was not accepted at this time. Special Characters -- Special characters cannot be used in titles/descriptions or editorial captions."

Special characters?! I have no idea what constitutes special characters. I understand that accent marks and the like would qualify as those but I definitely didn't use them because this isn't my first time to the editorial rodeo. Anyway, searching through their condescending tutorials and blogs netted me zilch. So I'm wondering if y'all can help explain it to me. Because at this point, it's starting to feel like I'm just being slapped around in some sadistic game of cat and mouse.

Thanks so much, y'all.

Could it possibly mean accents like tildes etc?

Hi, thanks for your response. I've not used any accents because they're generally not accepted at other agencies and figured this one would be no different.

I'd like to add the question, is there any way to see the captions after they've been rejected? I have the batch number, but the email they send doesn't include them.

Quote from: HelloMyNameIsYay on March 24, 2016, 18:29

Quote from: ShadySue on March 24, 2016, 18:27

Could it possibly mean accents like tildes etc?

Hi, thanks for your response. I've not used any accents because they're generally not accepted at other agencies and figured this one would be no different.

Sorry, I now see you wrote that in your OP. Haven't a clue, then.
Maybe someone who submits at SS will have come across this rejection and can help.

No there isn't any way to see captions in rejected files.

Correction:
Mouse over a rejected images thumbnail and the caption will open in a pop-up box.

You should be adding your metadata in photoshop or some other program so it is permanently with the image.
Or saving the info in an excel spread sheet so you have some reference.

Dashes - these are what is causing mayhem in the system, I have heard. Try captioning without any dashes.

Thank you so much! I'll try that.

by the way, its very harsh to reject your application because of special characters, I would email support and ask them if they can accept you as a contributor based on the image content and not the meta data

If you have your ex in the building, make a revenge by sending an image of you with your mistress. Preferably in the bed.

Why don't you post a couple of your editorial captions that got rejected here?  That will be the easiest way to get useful feedback - it's hard to comment on something you can't see.

I foolishly didn't save the captions that I created for these submissions. I was hoping there'd be a way to view them after the fact by batch #, but I'm to understand there isn't. I'm going to resubmit these though and if they're kicked back again I'll post the captions.

dashes are no issue, but if you use a foreign (to the US) keyboard you might end up with letters that could be seen as a special character. its probably what sue said

don't be so sure that dashes are not an issue, pressing the key to the right of 0 might be fine in adobe software, but if you are pasting descriptions from somewhere else there are 3 different types of dash that might be pasted in as special characters - some of them look exactly the same in a basic screen font.

HelloMyNameIsYay - if you do to your rejected photos, you can hoover over the thumbnail and see the description, if you then go to the page source you will find the description in the source and you can copy it from there. your keywords will be lost though

Colon can be a problem.

It can, especially as you get older. You should have it seen to.

Colons and dashes are no problem. Do not worry about them in editorial. I say this as one who specializes in editorial. You rejection reason makes about as much sense as the other more typical ones . . . lighting, focus, blah, blah. I would not waste much time these days obsessing and puzzling over the reviewer's comments. What they really need to add is one more canned response that makes sense:

I DON'T LIKE YOUR SUBMISSION!

HelloMyNameIsYay - if you do to your rejected photos, you can hoover over the thumbnail and see the description, if you then go to the page source you will find the description in the source and you can copy it from there. your keywords will be lost though

Thank you for pointing that out! So now I can see beyond any reasonable doubt that there are no "special characters" in my caption. Dashes and hyphens are what I cut and paste directly from Shutterstock's blog post "announcing new editorial guidelines" The template of which looks like this:

CITY, STATE/COUNTRY � MONTH DAY YEAR: [Factual description
of the image content, including who and what the image portrays].

And I deleted the whole description line before filling in my own. I see they have a "special character" in their own template. Is this some kind of joke?

This is my description for the first image.

SAO PAULO/SAO PAULO � FEBRUARY 7 2016: Smiling female carnival samba dancer performing for the samba school Academics of Tucuruvi at the Sambadrome in Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo is a standalone city and does not require the country or state.  You also don't need to put the year in the beginning but should include it somewhere in the description.

For example:

SAO PAULO -  FEBRUARY 7: Blah blah blah in Sao Paulo on February 7, 2016.


I don't know if it matters, but the dash that you are using is a different length than the dash that my keyboard produces so maybe that could also be considered a special character.

List of standalone cities is in the link:
http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/creating-the-perfect-editorial-caption