If your images are not approved you download rate decreases. That equal to losing money!!!

It is the inability of these sites to articulate what it "is" that they're looking for that causes frustration.  I seem to have no problems with SS,  they just accepted 8/8.  IS on the other hand rejected most of what I submitted.  Image quality is the same. 

Last 71 images submitted to SS: six rejected

Two for, Poor Lighting--Poor or uneven lighting, or shadows. White balance may be incorrect.
Focus--Your image is not in focus or focus is not located where we feel it works best.
Olympic logo is protected by copyright. Sorry we cannot accept this image.
Limited Commercial Value--We do not need this image at this time
Noise--Noise, film grain, over-sharpening, or artifacts at full size

I think they were correct on all of these, where I was pushing the limits, trying to see if something would get through. Except the Olympic logo rejection, my mistake. I removed the logo and the picture was accepted at IS and SS. It went through at all the rest with it showing.

I wouldn't call this a rejection explosion at SS.

Same photos to StockXpert, BS and 123 pretty much all accepted.

FT took almost all. (except the same ones with bad lighting or focus)

DT took 100% in January, rejected 100% in Feb. "too many like this"

Panther took 100% until Wed. with reviews of 2-3 images per week. Then Attila the reviewer came through and rejected all 25 waiting images for not needed, or too many like this. Funny how that works? Do the same reviewers work for DT and Panther?  How do they do three a week, and when it comes to rejections, all of a sudden, everything gets through in hours?

IS refused the last three which were isolated rose(s) on white. This month the identical images have all sold on StockXpert, twice each on SS. The usual, one other image refused on IS sold twice on SS the next day.

I know some people have said, the reviewers aren't baby sitters, they don't need to tell us why, but I feel that if they are going to give a reason, it should be useful, or they might as well just click "rejected". I have found SS rejections to be useful and accurate. Some other places are vague and random, often having nothing to do with the image, notably an unnamed site that polices critics, even if they are writing on an open forum. 

IS finds things that no one else can see, but that's their right. Blue things get rejected for purple fringing, when the identical lighting, camera, lens and shot with something red, is just fine. I don't even know if they looked at 100% or just saw purple around the edge of the blue at small size and moved on.

Are we confused? Yes, because there is the subjective review of one individual who works for the site. Comes with the game. I don't really care much and unless it's really a stand out, I don't bother re-submitting. I think I appealed one at SS and it was accepted. Had a whole batch one day at BS and they were reversed upon review. FT just said, that's what we decided, it doesn't mater what we took last month. Fixed the words at IS and they went through, no problem.

In the end we are dealing with subjective reviews and various reviewers, so I can't blame the site itself for opinions. Some days we get people that see the value in our images, other days we get someone that things it's not suitable for stock. That's the only rejection that drives me nuts. Over and over, not suitable on one site, sells immediately on multiple other sites.

Not worth the aggravation.  If they don't want it, I don't care anymore. They don't care either, because they have millions and millions of photos.

I agree with you. Even with the "we want less of these" or "we want more of these" tips, which are helpful, there's still no consistency between agencies or reviewers. No answer or logical explanation why IS and SS will take all of a batch and FT and DT will refuse the same photos. No understanding why SS takes something that IS refuses, or IS takes something that SS refuses. 

3 weeks after appealing a couple of IS rejections, I finally got a reply.  In one case what they "bad isolation" was actual surface irregularities on the photographed object, not postprocessing. I guess they want me to use sandpaper :-)   In another case they sent me a clip showing "compression aritifacts". I am staring at it now, trying to see those artifacts (I cannot) or imagine how there could even be compression artifacts in a jpg produced at the highest quality setting.

But the thing that really turns me off about IS is that keywording process. It's just too tedious, and life is too short. I'd rather find 4 other companies that - combined - sell as much as IS, and accept more of my photos, and use my IPTC data, and forget about IS.

SS accepted these photos right away and they've been selling. That is, if you call 25 cents a sale...

It�s to much focus on volume on SS. That�s why we have all these rejections.  I got overrunned by greed the other day, and runned around taking shots of everything. Almost all of em rejected.   guess why???

On the other side. Why put time in it when the payouts so low?   BUT that�s our own fault for feeding the beasts with gold.

Quote from: shutterdrop on March 05, 2009, 08:42

Is this an SS issue or a reviewer issue?

It's Atilla the Reviewer. He wanders from site to site and creates havock, lusting for rejections. He comes and goes. It's the Microstock version of the Grim Reaper.

Actually I made a comment here about SS changing a title of one of my images, and I got a very nice email from a SS lady explaining why. So watch out what you post, SS is watching you 

Usually the reviewers are  right. Accidents can happen, but then, next time you will have another reviewer which smoothes out the arbitrary element in any reviewing, especially of borderline images. SS is a numbers game, so why bother about an odd rejection? Just upload more. The time it takes to email/protest you can process other shots.

My last batch had 6/10 rejects, some for keywords. Usually it's 1-2 rejects. I'll just wait to upload another batch for a week till Atilla returned to his home base, at iStock. 

who DOES Atilla REALLY work for , FD?
i thought he was the bane of BigStock when i first joined them almost a year ago and got like rejections galore for my first 100 images , arghhh ! new boogeyman under my bed, skeleton in my closet ..ATILLA! then BigStock seems to suddenly like my images and it's quite normal since then. rejections yes, but the reasonable ones.
is this creature Atilla a free agent that stalks the microsites? if so, we have to find some sort of a Van Helsing or Selena to drive a silver dagger into his heart QUICK before he infects 2009 and cause the BLACK PLAGUE OF MICRO 

who DOES Atilla REALLY work for , FD?

Atilla is the ghost in the machine, a trick from Sha�tan himself. He loves to reject for the most stupid reasons. I'm sure it was Him since since my last message here, I had 2 other batches at SS that were accepted 90 and 100%. I told you, his home base is iStock but he got a bit bored there since He is not allowed to touch the exclusives. 

Atilla is actually working as a locum for reviewers. Whenever a reviewer at any agengy goes on leave, he gets Atilla to stand in for him. So you can get Atilla anywhere, anytime.

I got lucky and had 12 out of 15 accepted. Two for "not needed" and I agree after looking into it that the subject was a little over represented. The third was a lighting rejection, and I look at it again and I can agree. So I try to learn from this for my next upload. What gets me is hearing people say I had all my shots rejected - and they acknowledge that the shots were not very good. Then why are you uploading them? Good for SS for rejecting shots that are not good. I am happy to see rejections increase, as long as the inspection is fair. I hate it when sites like Crestock reject good images with no reasonable explanation.

5 of 5 rejected for over use of noise reduction. I cleared reject file and resubmitted and all were accepted. Some reviewers at SS are loose cannons on the deck!

Attila is at work again! He thinks every image should be Macrostock quality, Someone needs to tell him SS only pays.....................$.33 each for most downloads.

I somehow managed to avoid Attila for some time, had 100% accepted for the last couple of weeks.

I got a very surprising rejection this morning from quite a good image.
However, got two ELs within an hour of this, to soften the blow 

do you feel that there is an improvement in the rejection rate?
I still get lots of images rejected...

Standards have gone up on all the big sites since last summer, but Attila does review images for SS, most batches I have do quite well there, but my first batch of 8 earlier this month were greeted with 0/8 accepted, and that was a batch where Crestock accepted 2/8!!! I've never had crestock accept so many