MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Mrks on May 04, 2022, 00:11
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So, Shutterstock reviewers are rejecting photos left and right, and often with mistakes.
For example, they reject the whole series that I have done, multiple times, because the shirt that the model is wearing, had some material that reminds of some protected Burberry shirt. It is similar, but the colors are not the same, so, it's not protected.
They often confuse a bird in the distance, or snow, with the specs on a sensor. Also had a problem, when the photos got rejected for a reason I cannot remember now, but it was just some mist in the photo.
Not to mention strict policy on sharpness and while other agencies are not that strict, those photos are generating income, for me, and for the agency.
So, people who are reviewing our images, be aware that we invest money, time, and a lot of effort in these images, that you reject, and for your mistake, we are loosing time, and money both.
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Correction "shutterstock AI" is rejecting photos left and right, and often with mistakes.
and all for 10 whole cents! :(
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We’ll, I must be one of the lucky ones, as about 90% of my submissions get through first time. I can normally guess which ones won’t. Those shots normally contain water and foliage, that the AI classes as noise or focus issues.
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I also get more than 95% of my submission through the first time, so I don't have a problem with them other than their similarity rejections (Which you can mostly avoid by not submitting images from the same shoot in one batch) If you look at their newest images of any random topic you will usually find countless almost identical images where the camera was moved 5 centimeters and that's all the difference, and then you will get two images form the same shoot with a competely different composition rejected for being too similar. There similar rules are also pretty concrete, yet some reviewers seem to have never looked at them or understood them - in both ways. Some accept images that are way too similar and should never have been accepted, others go crazy and reject every photo with the same subject, no matter how different.
Other than that I am almost glad that they have become a bit stricter - I was only looking through my old photos last week to sort some out to possibly submit to FAA and, oh m gosh - there are so many old photos of mine SS accepted that I would not even try to submit these days as the focus is horrible. I am almost ashamed at the thought that a customer might download one of these only seeing the small preview and then realizing how blurry the image is in full size. If I didn't know that 95% of my photos only end up being used in small size on the internet anyways, I might even delete these photos from my port.
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We’ll, I must be one of the lucky ones, as about 90% of my submissions get through first time. I can normally guess which ones won’t. Those shots normally contain water and foliage, that the AI classes as noise or focus issues.
Are you guys sure that the problem is in the AI? If that's the case, then that AI is faulty.
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I also get more than 95% of my submission through the first time, so I don't have a problem with them other than their similarity rejections (Which you can mostly avoid by not submitting images from the same shoot in one batch) If you look at their newest images of any random topic you will usually find countless almost identical images where the camera was moced 5 centimeters and that's all the difference, and then you will get two images form the same shoot with a competely different composition rejected for being too similar. There similar rules are also pretty concrete, yet some reviewers seem to have never looked at them or understood them.
Other than that I am almost glad that they have become a bit stricter - I was only looking through my old photos last week to sort some out to possibly submit to FAA and, oh m gosh - there are so many old photos of mine SS accepted that I would not even try to submit these days as the focus is horrible. I am almost ashamed at the thought that a customer might download one of these only seeing the small preview and then realizing how blurry the image is in full size. If I didn't know that 95% of my photos only end up being used in small size on the internet anyways, I might even delete these photos from my port.
When I downsize my images, as you guys said, most of them get accepted, but does that means that they will not be sold for an extended license and mostly at 10c?
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When I downsize my images, as you guys said, most of them get accepted, but does that means that they will not be sold for an extended license and mostly at 10c?
That will completely depend on what the customer wants the image for, not necessarily the type of licence. If he wants to print it on a huge billboard in town, then, yes, small image size might keep him from buying the image. But if he wants to print it as a postcard, then the minimum size Shutterstock requires is more than enough. I guess in the end it's probably like this: Downsizing will not keep you from getting extended licence sales, but it will make the chance of it smaller as it does limit the possible usage of an image.
But, in the end, the one image you won't get an extended license sale for sure is the image that never got accepted, so I'd say it's better to have a downsized image accepted than not having it accepted at all.
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When I downsize my images, as you guys said, most of them get accepted, but does that means that they will not be sold for an extended license and mostly at 10c?
That will completely depend on what the customer wants the image for, not necessarily the type of licence. If he wants to print it on a huge billboard in town, then, yes, small image size might keep him from buying the image. But if he wants to print it as a postcard, then the minimum size Shutterstock requires is more than enough. I guess in the end it's probably like this: Downsizing will not keep you from getting extended licence sales, but it will make the chance of it smaller as it does limit the possible usage of an image.
But, in the end, the one image you won't get an extended license sale for sure is the image that never got accepted, so I'd say it's better to have a downsized image accepted than not having it accepted at all.
Thanks Firn, will keep that in mind ;)
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Correction "shutterstock AI" is rejecting photos left and right, and often with mistakes.
and all for 10 whole cents! :(
I've just asked SS help and got the answer that there is no AI doing the reviews, it's all done by humans.
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Correction "shutterstock AI" is rejecting photos left and right, and often with mistakes.
and all for 10 whole cents! :(
I've just asked SS help and got the answer that there is no AI doing the reviews, it's all done by humans.
Contrary to what shutterstock's owners previously stated.
Anyway SS help is manned by other contributors and they aren't party to the inner workings of SS
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We’ll, I must be one of the lucky ones, as about 90% of my submissions get through first time. I can normally guess which ones won’t. Those shots normally contain water and foliage, that the AI classes as noise or focus issues.
Are you guys sure that the problem is in the AI? If that's the case, then that AI is faulty.
It's not faulty, it's just not very intelligent.
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I find that it depends on the type of photo.
For example, I find it almost impossible to get landscapes accepted or anything that has a lot of trees/foliage. The usually get rejected for focus no matter how hard I try.
On the other hand, most shots I take of objects or buildings (without a lot of trees around them) or shots I take at home of various objects are accepted first time.
The good news is that Adobe usually accepts those shots which SS rejects and they pay more when one of them is downloaded by a customer.
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The whole issue with technical image quality and rejections is absurd. Two of my images with over 1000 downloads at shutterstock, only a few megapixels in size, taken years ago with a poor compact camera and certainly not accepted in terms of quality today, still sell regularly. They still sell even as extended licenses. And another image from back then in the same "poor" quality is still offered at FAA for large print products.
Personally, I am annoyed about the discussion of the technical quality of images anyway. What do buyers expect for the pennies they pay?
I think it's a huge mistake to worry about this as a contributor. If shutterstock doesn't want the images, then just sell them somewhere else - for more money.
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Shutterstock rejections have become absurd. I had almost 100% acceptance there and elsewhere too.
They use out of focus or camera shake as excuse-- totally bogus. Shot on non-moving tripod with best aperature setting. Same studio and settings as all the others they accept in studio. I look at my photos at 200%-- yep, in focus and no camera shake and accepted by place stricter than SS.
I do have to agree, for 10 cents, for most sales no matter what level, SS does not deserve most of the technical qualities they expect.
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Two of my images with over 1000 downloads at shutterstock, only a few megapixels in size, taken years ago with a poor compact camera and certainly not accepted in terms of quality today, still sell regularly.
I have a few images like this. I even uploaded a better versions of those images, but people still buying a poor quality photos.
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I have noticed that many of my images are rejected almost immediately after submitting. For a short while, the rejection reason in the app said "AI - Noise" or "AI - Focus". When I reached out to Shutterstock to see how to bypass their AI system and get an actual reviewer, they told me that real people review all images. When I provided the screenshots of where the rejection reason was labeled "AI" and showed the timestamps of how immediate the reviews were, the Shutterstock Expert said that he would need to speak to his colleagues because he never saw that reason code before my screenshots.
Any tips on how to bypass this awful AI system? I submit many wildlife photos and the AI seems to interpret grass, leaves, and branches as noise!
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I have noticed that many of my images are rejected almost immediately after submitting. For a short while, the rejection reason in the app said "AI - Noise" or "AI - Focus". When I reached out to Shutterstock to see how to bypass their AI system and get an actual reviewer, they told me that real people review all images. When I provided the screenshots of where the rejection reason was labeled "AI" and showed the timestamps of how immediate the reviews were, the Shutterstock Expert said that he would need to speak to his colleagues because he never saw that reason code before my screenshots.
Any tips on how to bypass this awful AI system? I submit many wildlife photos and the AI seems to interpret grass, leaves, and branches as noise!
Which is a clear signal that the "Experts" don't work for Shutterstock and don't know anything more than the people here could tell you.
No you can't avoid the AI and the answer that every image is looked at by a human only applies conditionally to those that are actually reviewed by a human. The AI rejections are before your image gets to review. It's a trick of logic and terminology. Your images or mine that are rejected by AI, are not reviewed, they are deemed unsuitable by the AI.
An easier way to explain would be, if you upload a 2MP image, it's refused and not sent to review. AI says, nope, refused, doesn't meet the standards, it doesn't go to "REVIEW"
Dumbots do that.
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I've been on a cruise for the last couple of weeks and have uploaded quite a lot of photos from various stops. So here are some of my observations:
1. There is no consistency in reviews. Some reviewers are ridiculously strict and reject just about everything while others are more reasonable and sensible. That doesn't mean that bad photos pass but good ones generally do depending on the reviewer. So you need to resubmit, often multiple times.
2. Reviews of commercial photos tend to be stricter than those of editorial. Review time is also longer. It is especially hard to get landscapes passed in my experience. Also hard to get shots taken from a distance (e.g. a view of a town taken from the deck of a ship).
3. Focus rejections are a 'catch-all'. I took a couple of photos of a fairly unique church but the sky is completely washed out. Not much I could do about that unfortunately. The church is in focus but it isn't a great photo because of the sky. I accept that. In my opinion, they didn't want the shot and used focus as the excuse.
4. I think they might use AI as a first screening. I had one shot bounced out really fast a couple of times and I think that was the AI. If it gets past AI then it probably goes to a reviewer.
5. Most of the shots I submitted were accepted and even some that I thought were on the edge for various reasons. I have a small file of shots where I continue to disagree with the decision and will continue to resubmit. In a number of cases, I had to resubmit a couple of times but I got there.
6. I have the resubmission process down to a 'fine art' so it costs me very little time to do it.
7. Shutterstock clearly have 'their standard' of what they want in terms of quality and focus. Many of us might disagree but it is what it is and there is little point in getting upset about it. Just play the game.
Just to reiterate, these are my personal observations based on three hundred or so submissions over the past few weeks. Others may have a different perspective and that is their right.
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I did circle back the next day to the chat since he said that he would confer with his colleagues. The Shutterstock Expert confirmed that Shutterstock may be doing a trial with AI but never officially announced it. While AI was always used to weed out the bad image sizes, formatting, etc., it was never used for focus, noise, etc. I asked how do I bypass the AI since perfectly good images were being rejected because of a bare branch or a leaf being interpreted as noise. His answer was to slightly alter the image by zooming in to try and bypass the AI screening. I tested it with a series of images of a bird in a bush. I edited the 20 that got rejected by the AI for noise. After editing, (1) got past the AI system, the other (19) were immediately rejected. This morning, the reviewer approved that (1) image and it's now in my port. But I thought there was noise?
It's frustrating, but it looks like editing an image to trick a computer is the only way at this point!
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1. There is no consistency in reviews. Some reviewers are ridiculously strict and reject just about everything while others are more reasonable and sensible. That doesn't mean that bad photos pass but good ones generally do depending on the reviewer. So you need to resubmit, often multiple times.
definitely - i've found some reviewers will reject an entire batch for the same reason, even though only a few might actually be at fault - resubmit gets most accepted
3. Focus rejections are a 'catch-all'. I took a couple of photos of a fairly unique church but the sky is completely washed out. Not much I could do about that unfortunately. The church is in focus but it isn't a great photo because of the sky. I accept that. In my opinion, they didn't want the shot and used focus as the excuse.
they're very strict about 'posterization' in skies (so mild other agencies accept)- often occurs with bracketed HDR. i sometimes can fix with just a light Gaussian blur. i reduce to 4mp then use AI gigapixel & reduce to 6mp (all quickly done in batches). these are accepted after both noise & focus rejects
6. I have the resubmission process down to a 'fine art' so it costs me very little time to do it.
that's the key -- and SS is the only agency for which i'll do this
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... After editing, (1) got past the AI system, the other (19) were immediately rejected. This morning, the reviewer approved that (1) image and it's now in my port. But I thought there was noise?
It's frustrating, but it looks like editing an image to trick a computer is the only way at this point!
for some images i'll use PS neural artifact removal filter
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Has anyone noticed that new images don't sell like the old ones. I have almost no sales for images that I uploaded after march 31 2021.
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Has anyone noticed that new images don't sell like the old ones. I have almost no sales for images that I uploaded after march 31 2021.
I answered your other post with the same question, and the answer is yes many people have seen the same trend.
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I would say that resubmit always goes to human reviewer, but the first attempt... who knows. Basically all landscape images from full frame camera are rejected for focus (but they are just detailed - it seems that some AI does not understand grass straws and consider the details as noise). It is much easier to get accepted blurred images (soft corners) from a compact camera than perfectly sharp images from a full frame.
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Has anyone noticed that new images don't sell like the old ones. I have almost no sales for images that I uploaded after march 31 2021.
The opposite is true for me. The images I uploaded this year have sold a lot more than images from before.
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Has anyone noticed that new images don't sell like the old ones. I have almost no sales for images that I uploaded after march 31 2021.
The opposite is true for me. The images I uploaded this year have sold a lot more than images from before.
Sounds like a comment from an SS troller. Personally, my sales are almost always images from years ago that have always been popular. Anything recent rarely sees the light of day. I'm thinking that's the same situation for most SS contributors and the problem when an agency is tanking.
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Sounds like a comment from an SS troller. Personally, my sales are almost always images from years ago that have always been popular. Anything recent rarely sees the light of day. I'm thinking that's the same situation for most SS contributors and the problem when an agency is tanking.
lol... Judging much? I hate SS as much as anybody. But I can only tell you what's happening in my port. Do older images sell? Yeah, of course. But only the ones that have gained popularity with the algorithm over the years. By contrast, more of the images I've uploaded this year sell than the older ones. But yeah, if you think I'm a troll, I can't help it I guess.
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Why is everyone who makes a different experience from your own always considered a troll, a fanboy or someone secretly working fore SS? Different people have different ports that work different on different agencies, so everyone's experience must not be the same.
This year my SS earnings have been mediocre, but last year, when everyone was already complaining that their earnings have gone down because of the change of the earning structure, Shutterstock was my best performer most months and in many of these months it was even doing better for me than any other agency ever had. Adobe on the other hand, which everyone was praising and where everyone was saying it was outperforming SS, had rather been on a decline of earnings for me, only earning me a small fraction of what SS earned me. Back then some people also had problems believing me and I was called a "Shutterstock fanboy". Sorry you have such a hard time beliving other people's ports perfome differently than yours? It's the same with people who say Shutterstock rejected 90% of all new content. Sorry, but that's simply not my experience at all.
As for the topic: For me too old content sells about the same as new content. But I think it plays a role here how old your "old" content is. I have heard from contributors who have been with Shutterstock for 10+ years that their old bestsellers that have established a good position in the ranking over the years still keeps selling. And in comparison to that new content hardly sells. But if you haven't been with microstock all that long, like I have, content from 2021 or 2020 doesn't sell more often than content from 2022 - Yes, I have managed a few images with good ranking that sell on a regular basis and therefore of course more frequently than newer images, but that's simply because of the ranking a newer image can't have achieved yet when it has not accumilated enough sales to rank that high. But if you find the right topic, a new image can still sell frequently. If I look at my SS top performers I even have an images from 2022 in my top 10 lifetime best perfomers. So new content can still sell very well. It's just getting harder every day as your competition is getting bigger every single day.
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Yeah, it's the much touted, much ballyhooed AI in real world action.
Not worth diddly doo
I've had all sorts of rejections.
Tried to upload a picture of a truck in a Texas sandstorm.
Keeps getting rejected for noise and grain. No kidding?
This same picture was accepted by Adobe, Dreamstime, Wirestock and 123.
I just take it in stride tho and just say to myself, "Dang - that cost me a dime" and move on.
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I would say that resubmit always goes to human reviewer, but the first attempt... who knows. Basically all landscape images from full frame camera are rejected for focus (but they are just detailed - it seems that some AI does not understand grass straws and consider the details as noise). It is much easier to get accepted blurred images (soft corners) from a compact camera than perfectly sharp images from a full frame.
Its been like this for a while - full resolution images at 30-50mp get rejected for focus and noise. Downsizing that same image to 8MP and it gets accepted.
The AI seems to struggle with smaller pixels when ranking an image for focus.
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I also get more than 95% of my submission through the first time, so I don't have a problem with them other than their similarity rejections (Which you can mostly avoid by not submitting images from the same shoot in one batch) If you look at their newest images of any random topic you will usually find countless almost identical images where the camera was moced 5 centimeters and that's all the difference, and then you will get two images form the same shoot with a competely different composition rejected for being too similar. There similar rules are also pretty concrete, yet some reviewers seem to have never looked at them or understood them.
Other than that I am almost glad that they have become a bit stricter - I was only looking through my old photos last week to sort some out to possibly submit to FAA and, oh m gosh - there are so many old photos of mine SS accepted that I would not even try to submit these days as the focus is horrible. I am almost ashamed at the thought that a customer might download one of these only seeing the small preview and then realizing how blurry the image is in full size. If I didn't know that 95% of my photos only end up being used in small size on the internet anyways, I might even delete these photos from my port.
When I downsize my images, as you guys said, most of them get accepted, but does that means that they will not be sold for an extended license and mostly at 10c?
Yes, I often have to downsize photos from 16MP to 12MP and they mostly get accepted.I nearly always have to do this with photos that have small subjects in the distance which would be naturally less sharp due to heat haze or pollution. Also photos with trees. This A.I. won't take subjects and weather conditions into account. Shutterstock must know about the problem but are in denial because when I complain to CS (they are not even a part of SS) they keep saying the same old garbage about SS requiring very high technical standards.
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I would say that resubmit always goes to human reviewer, but the first attempt... who knows. Basically all landscape images from full frame camera are rejected for focus (but they are just detailed - it seems that some AI does not understand grass straws and consider the details as noise). It is much easier to get accepted blurred images (soft corners) from a compact camera than perfectly sharp images from a full frame.
Its been like this for a while - full resolution images at 30-50mp get rejected for focus and noise. Downsizing that same image to 8MP and it gets accepted.
The AI seems to struggle with smaller pixels when ranking an image for focus.
I once submitted a completely blurred image taken at night because the AF failed & was accepted.
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When I downsize my images, as you guys said, most of them get accepted, but does that means that they will not be sold for an extended license and mostly at 10c?
That will completely depend on what the customer wants the image for, not necessarily the type of licence. If he wants to print it on a huge billboard in town, then, yes, small image size might keep him from buying the image. But if he wants to print it as a postcard, then the minimum size Shutterstock requires is more than enough. I guess in the end it's probably like this: Downsizing will not keep you from getting extended licence sales, but it will make the chance of it smaller as it does limit the possible usage of an image.
But, in the end, the one image you won't get an extended license sale for sure is the image that never got accepted, so I'd say it's better to have a downsized image accepted than not having it accepted at all.
I don't see many printed billboards anymore. They are mostly adverts on big LED flat screens and if you look at them closely you can see the dots that make up the image which means even a 4MP image would work fine with them.
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I had a bunch of rejections for "3D images must be signed as 3D", while it was clearly 2D drawings. I tried a few reuploads - no success. So, I just added in the title what they asked and in all passed through.
So, yeap, it's AI and it is dumb.
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I just uploaded a picture of a forest, just trees and a lake behind them. It got rejected for missing model release.
Do they require a model release for trees now?
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¡Hola! Hello from Spain, sorry if my english is not very good.
I just want to share my experience whit all of you, trying to upload photos to my shutterstock account.
Read it please. May be someone could help me, maybe some one could understand better what happends today with SS.
First of all, I've been trying to contact Shutterstock support for three days, and I can't, because the contact form gives the same error.
https://ibb.co/y8R6wXT <--- can be seen here.... Also, on previous occasions recently I have found that it is impossible for shutterstock to help you, as they have outsourced to a company the support service, and they can't see any confidential information, ergo their help is of little use.
On the other hand, I have tried to upload three of the images that are currently rejected in the account I want to boost, in another shutterstock account different from this main one, which is where I want to upload the images that are rejected, and these three images have also been rejected, saying that the content has been uploaded previously, when it is a lie, because it has been rejected and is not online.
Here are the rejected images in question on the main account I want to boost:
https://ibb.co/P175nLd <-- Image 1
https://ibb.co/ypdbXpy <-- Image 2
https://ibb.co/K0TxCPW <-- Image 3
And here you can see those same three images pointed out, that I have tried to upload in another account, but they have rejected because they claim they are previously sent when it is a lie, they have not been published nor accepted:
https://ibb.co/PZ6B1Wc <-- The three images in question.
Conclusion. Either nobody reads the model release on Shutterstock, or the one who reviews the images is racist and doesn't accept my images because my friend is black, (I am white caucasian), or the one who reviews is a robot and doesn't know anything.
The images of the photo shoot with my friend, have been accepted at the first time without problems, for example on adobestock:
https://ibb.co/TLh7hDV <-- accepted on adobe
Or on iStock, among other stocks:
https://ibb.co/c3JL9gc <-- accepted on istock....
I don't know what to think anymore... But don't miss it, there's still more!
This summer I did some photography at a local fitness gym in the town where I live. Same shoot, same model release, I upload a bunch of photos from the shoot, all in order:
https://ibb.co/pd3vy82 <-- Accepted!
I upload another set of photos from the same session again in the next week or so, same model release, same models, same location, same sixon, all in order:
https://ibb.co/2P77pJC <-- Rejected!
Anyway, I think I've been blacklisted or something at shutterstock and they don't want any more pictures from me. I am writing to you here as I am trying to dig into internet forums about shutterstock and why they treat us contributors so badly. There is no more shutterstock forum, they closed it down, there is no direct community that can help or advise you. The company doesn't answer, the information they give is ambiguous or labyrinthine? I understand that they have to lower the prices of everything to compete, ok, I accept that to a certain extent, but * it, don't treat your collaborators like that! Treat them with care and take care of them properly!
I just wanted to share my strange experience with you, in case it helps you in any way. I don't think I'm going to be accepted on shutterstock anymore for some strange reason that I can't figure out. My model releases are correct, they are accepted by all other agencies, they have all the legally required data, etc.
Well, greetings from Spain, and thanks for your attention (I would have liked the images in the links to have the texts in English, but I don't know how to view shutterstock in English, it always loads in Spanish no matter what I do). I've used deepl to help me with the English text, although some of it is written by me.
Best regards!
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Two accounts and they are noticing the same images uploaded to both. You won't last long.
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You're breaking rules using multiple accounts. Simply don't do this and everything will be ok
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Two accounts and they are noticing the same images uploaded to both. You won't last long.
right, and OP is confusing 'uploaded' with accepted/rejected
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I have no issues with SS...haven't submitted for 2 years and nor will I in future for 10 cents. If I get some decent SODs in a month, sales are OK but without some SODs, sales are pretty pathetic.......still....for no effort everything is a bonus!
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Two accounts and they are noticing the same images uploaded to both. You won't last long.
Calling ss racist rejections for same images uploaded to another account?
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Two accounts and they are noticing the same images uploaded to both. You won't last long.
Seriously shitterstock don't even notice all the stolen images and similars they allow in ;D
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Two accounts and they are noticing the same images uploaded to both. You won't last long.
No, you do not understand, I have two accounts, in one account I upload editorial images most of the time. In other account I upload creative photos only lifestyle. I never upload the same photos in the two accounts. But I tried to upload in the first account three of the photos rejected in the second account, because of the model release, (all photos has being accepted in other agencies).
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Calling ss racist rejections for same images uploaded to another account?
[/quote] Well, Well, I don't know what to think anymore. Photographs that look great and are selling in other agencies and whose model release has been accepted without any problem, are rejected again and again in SS because supposedly the model release is not valid. I have already written my problem above. Nobody answers me anything other than, I can't have two accounts and I can't upload photos to two accounts. What a forum, so little help.
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Two accounts and they are noticing the same images uploaded to both. You won't last long.
Seriously shitterstock don't even notice all the stolen images and similars they allow in ;D
I am not uploading duplicate photos to different accounts, didn't you read my message above, did I write wrong in English and didn't explain what is wrong with me? I see that nobody has answered me anything interesting, just that I can't upload photos to two accounts, when I do NOT upload the same photos to two accounts.
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Maybe Shutterstock guidelines are helpfull for you ;)
Our policy does not permit one person to hold multiple accounts without expressed written permission from Shutterstock.
Since each person or entity can only own one portfolio, a second account would be permissible if it is registered under the name of a different entity, with its own copyrighted material.
If you also own a company, you would be allowed to have one personal account under your name and one business account under the company name. You may not share content between the two accounts, each account must have its own owner with its own content.
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Calling ss racist rejections for same images uploaded to another account?
Well, Well, I don't know what to think anymore. Photographs that look great and are selling in other agencies and whose model release has been accepted without any problem, are rejected again and again in SS because supposedly the model release is not valid. I have already written my problem above. Nobody answers me anything other than, I can't have two accounts and I can't upload photos to two accounts. What a forum, so little help.
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Because you accuse them of being racist and blacklisting you not asking about rejection reasons or why a model release is rejected. We can't help your anger. You're right the support is terrible and they don't answer, been that way for years. You can't have two accounts. What should we answer to that?
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Calling ss racist rejections for same images uploaded to another account?
Well, Well, I don't know what to think anymore. Photographs that look great and are selling in other agencies and whose model release has been accepted without any problem, are rejected again and again in SS because supposedly the model release is not valid. I have already written my problem above. Nobody answers me anything other than, I can't have two accounts and I can't upload photos to two accounts. What a forum, so little help.
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Because you accuse them of being racist and blacklisting you not asking about rejection reasons or why a model release is rejected. We can't help your anger. You're right the support is terrible and they don't answer, been that way for years. You can't have two accounts. What should we answer to that?
I can't really confirm that about the support. Last week I had incomprehensible rejections because of incorrect PR. After the contact letter on the same day came a few follow-up questions from support and after reviewing my case, I received a clarifying helpful answer.
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I would say that resubmit always goes to human reviewer, but the first attempt... who knows. Basically all landscape images from full frame camera are rejected for focus (but they are just detailed - it seems that some AI does not understand grass straws and consider the details as noise). It is much easier to get accepted blurred images (soft corners) from a compact camera than perfectly sharp images from a full frame.
Unfortunately, this isn't true with their new AI system. Even after selecting the "previously submitted" checkbox, the AI automatically rejects the images within seconds. I've started submitting images as editorials when they don't need to be just to avoid the robot. Interestingly, they get approved when they reach a human reviewer.
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Well, Well, I don't know what to think anymore. Photographs that look great and are selling in other agencies and whose model release has been accepted without any problem, are rejected again and again in SS because supposedly the model release is not valid. I have already written my problem above. Nobody answers me anything other than, I can't have two accounts and I can't upload photos to two accounts. What a forum, so little help.
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What is your question? I don't see any questions, just your experience and your conclusions. People will help if you ask a question.
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Just wanted to see if anyone had any insight on this - there's a photo I recently submitted - let's say it's a photo of a flower. I submit it, along with about 30 other photos (mix of commercial and editorial). Only THIS photo gets reviewed immediately - and immediately gets swiftly rejected due to "noise" (uh huh.... ::) ) The other photos stay in the queue and are later reviewed.
I see the rejection and get irritated lol, so I re-submit the photo of the flower. Again, immediately rejected for noise. For kicks, I submit some more photos. Those photos sit in the queue as they should.
I try it a third time - again, immediately rejected.
Anyone know what's going on here? It's so weird. It's just this one particular photo.
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Just wanted to see if anyone had any insight on this - there's a photo I recently submitted - let's say it's a photo of a flower. I submit it, along with about 30 other photos (mix of commercial and editorial). Only THIS photo gets reviewed immediately - and immediately gets swiftly rejected due to "noise" (uh huh.... ::) ) The other photos stay in the queue and are later reviewed.
I see the rejection and get irritated lol, so I re-submit the photo of the flower. Again, immediately rejected for noise. For kicks, I submit some more photos. Those photos sit in the queue as they should.
I try it a third time - again, immediately rejected.
Anyone know what's going on here? It's so weird. It's just this one particular photo.
This kind of review behavior started already a few months ago: My images now always get reviewed in 2 "batches". I can submit for example 10 images and 4 will be reviewed at one point, and the other 6 at another time. Some think that the faster review is an AI review, though I doubt that. An AI review would still not take hours. But maybe there is still an AI involved in the review, by pre-sorting the images for rerview and there are two different review teams. Maybe a standart one that gets the images where the AI can't auto-detect any problems with things like focus or noise and the ones where the AI fails to make an assessment go to a more experienced review team? This is of course all pure speculation. All I can say for sure is that commercial images submitted get devided into two different review processes now, like it has always been for editorial and commercial images, but now there is a second commercial images category.
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Just wanted to see if anyone had any insight on this - there's a photo I recently submitted - let's say it's a photo of a flower. I submit it, along with about 30 other photos (mix of commercial and editorial). Only THIS photo gets reviewed immediately - and immediately gets swiftly rejected due to "noise" (uh huh.... ::) ) The other photos stay in the queue and are later reviewed.
I see the rejection and get irritated lol, so I re-submit the photo of the flower. Again, immediately rejected for noise. For kicks, I submit some more photos. Those photos sit in the queue as they should.
I try it a third time - again, immediately rejected.
Anyone know what's going on here? It's so weird. It's just this one particular photo.
Yes, AI makes the fast rejections, before the image gets to the next possible level. We don't know and there could be a second level of AI, or something that makes suggestions to human reviewers, so they can work faster, and make fast rejections.
Does the image pass anywhere else? Post the image here and get some answers when people can see the actual question. Otherwise we're just making generalized guesses. It's a flower. For all we know, the AI says, "It's another flower, just reject it for noise."
As far as I know and all the way back into the early years, clicking submitted before does nothing. Why should I tell them? Their image intake is easily hundreds of thousands a day. The cost of having someone look again at a rejected image, because it has a box checked, would be a constant recycling of the same images, which makes no sense. That's why they used to have a rule about not uploading the same images again, or there was a potential for the account to be locked. Now they just say, send it in again.
Suggestion, if the image is large, downsize to 6MP and upload again. Many of us have found that reducing an image to that, will suddenly make it not noisy or pixelated. The dumb AI will pass it.
Here's the complete rejection reason - Noise / Artifacts: Content contains noise, film grain, compression artifacts, pixelation, and/or posterization that detracts from the main subject.
Unless you get something special that just says NOISE, there are a number of reasons included in that.
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Just wanted to see if anyone had any insight on this - there's a photo I recently submitted - let's say it's a photo of a flower. I submit it, along with about 30 other photos (mix of commercial and editorial). Only THIS photo gets reviewed immediately - and immediately gets swiftly rejected due to "noise" (uh huh.... ::) ) The other photos stay in the queue and are later reviewed.
I see the rejection and get irritated lol, so I re-submit the photo of the flower. Again, immediately rejected for noise. For kicks, I submit some more photos. Those photos sit in the queue as they should.
I try it a third time - again, immediately rejected.
Anyone know what's going on here? It's so weird. It's just this one particular photo.
Yes, AI makes the fast rejections, before the image gets to the next possible level. We don't know and there could be a second level of AI, or something that makes suggestions to human reviewers, so they can work faster, and make fast rejections.
Does the image pass anywhere else? Post the image here and get some answers when people can see the actual question. Otherwise we're just making generalized guesses. It's a flower. For all we know, the AI says, "It's another flower, just reject it for noise."
As far as I know and all the way back into the early years, clicking submitted before does nothing. Why should I tell them? Their image intake is easily hundreds of thousands a day. The cost of having someone look again at a rejected image, because it has a box checked, would be a constant recycling of the same images, which makes no sense. That's why they used to have a rule about not uploading the same images again, or there was a potential for the account to be locked. Now they just say, send it in again.
Suggestion, if the image is large, downsize to 6MP and upload again. Many of us have found that reducing an image to that, will suddenly make it not noisy or pixelated. The dumb AI will pass it.
Here's the complete rejection reason - Noise / Artifacts: Content contains noise, film grain, compression artifacts, pixelation, and/or posterization that detracts from the main subject.
Unless you get something special that just says NOISE, there are a number of reasons included in that.
When I get a noise rejection, I usually just run it through the Denoise filter in Affinity and, seven times out of ten, that does the trick.
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on noise rejection, i upsize in ai giga, then reduce & it's usually accepted. SS is anal about sky noise that others accept. sometimes applying a mild blur to sky will be accepted
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Just wanted to see if anyone had any insight on this - there's a photo I recently submitted - let's say it's a photo of a flower. I submit it, along with about 30 other photos (mix of commercial and editorial). Only THIS photo gets reviewed immediately - and immediately gets swiftly rejected due to "noise" (uh huh.... ::) ) The other photos stay in the queue and are later reviewed.
I see the rejection and get irritated lol, so I re-submit the photo of the flower. Again, immediately rejected for noise. For kicks, I submit some more photos. Those photos sit in the queue as they should.
I try it a third time - again, immediately rejected.
Anyone know what's going on here? It's so weird. It's just this one particular photo.
This kind of review behavior started already a few months ago: My images now always get reviewed in 2 "batches". I can submit for example 10 images and 4 will be reviewed at one point, and the other 6 at another time. Some think that the faster review is an AI review, though I doubt that. An AI review would still not take hours. But maybe there is still an AI involved in the review, by pre-sorting the images for rerview and there are two different review teams. Maybe a standart one that gets the images where the AI can't auto-detect any problems with things like focus or noise and the ones where the AI fails to make an assessment go to a more experienced review team? This is of course all pure speculation. All I can say for sure is that commercial images submitted get devided into two different review processes now, like it has always been for editorial and commercial images, but now there is a second commercial images category.
I can confirm that it is an AI doing this. When they first started the roll out, I had notifications that literally say "AI - Noise" or "AI - Exposure". When I sent the screenshots of these denial reasons to a shutterstock expert, they said that AI review was part of a soft roll out that I've been so lucky (insert sarcasm here) to be a part of. The only work around I've found so far is to submit as editorial. They do get accepted as editorials, but it's ridiculous and frustrating.
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When I get a noise rejection, I usually just run it through the Denoise filter in Affinity and, seven times out of ten, that does the trick.
Thank You, I bought Affinity and don't use it, but there are some other features that looked like they could be useful. I don't have Dx0 or any of the others, and I've never used noise reduction, ever, in the past. But now I'm going to give it a try.
I didn't know that Affinity had that! 8) (https://i.postimg.cc/YqC3vC8g/cheers.gif)
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"I notice there is a difference with rejections for me, compared to a few weeks ago. In my experience I have not gotten the instant rejections until now. I had an image that had some light flares in it on a bike frame. I had intentionally enhanced the flares liking the effect. It was rejected for noise. I resubmitted and it was rejected again for noise. I got rid of the flares in case they were the noise. Still rejected for noise. I reduced the size, ran it through noise software and always got the immediate noise rejection."
I'm not looking for a critique, just making a comment. I uploaded 7 times, and got instant rejections. In the past, it was not instant unless the Qs were empty. It doesn't seem to be getting a new look, but just rejected for the same thing over and over.
I realize they have 80 gazillion images, but if a submitter is not able to ever correct an error or get another look.....
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When I get a noise rejection, I usually just run it through the Denoise filter in Affinity and, seven times out of ten, that does the trick.
Thank You, I bought Affinity and don't use it, but there are some other features that looked like they could be useful. I don't have Dx0 or any of the others, and I've never used noise reduction, ever, in the past. But now I'm going to give it a try.
I didn't know that Affinity had that! 8) (https://i.postimg.cc/YqC3vC8g/cheers.gif)
It's under the Filters tab, then "Noise". You can adjust the settings as how you want it to work.
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Actually, to prevent rejections, a good tip is to ADD noise to your photos (Gaussian 0.7).
Some tools (e.g. DXO) are too good at cleaning all noise and SS doesn't like it.
Moreover, other small imperfections (e.g. banding) can be masked with a bit of extra noise.
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Actually, to prevent rejections, a good tip is to ADD noise to your photos (Gaussian 0.7).
Some tools (e.g. DXO) are too good at cleaning all noise and SS doesn't like it.
Moreover, other small imperfections (e.g. banding) can be masked with a bit of extra noise.
I'm so confused now, in order to pass and not get rejected for "focus" I need to add blur? :o
Seriously I used the setting Auto on the new FUJI W3 and I don't even know what ISO the camera decided was right. Didn't look. Just learning and getting to know the camera.
The f/stops are limited on that model, f/3.7 f/5 and f/8, which if I choose ISO 100, will be interesting? Tripod will be involved. Also that camera has an option of ISO (Auto 400) which means the highest it will use is 400. The lowest setting is (Auto 200) if I don't go to fixed 100 ISO, which one of the settings I now have that as the default. Fine, I can do that.
Shutter speeds are different on Manual (if I should want to go to that) than they are on Night. Normally 1/4 to 1/1000, on a tripod night 3 seconds is the longest available shutter speed.
Toy Camera but it should be fun to make 3D images with a two lens camera.
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Is anyone else having trouble getting horizontal and vertical versions of same subject approved? Many of my vertical images have been rejected for similar content lately.
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Is anyone else having trouble getting horizontal and vertical versions of same subject approved? Many of my vertical images have been rejected for similar content lately.
No, but what exactly are you trying to submit? It's not allowed to submit the same image as both vertical or horizontal image. (https://support.submit.shutterstock.com/s/article/Why-was-my-content-rejected-for-Similar-Content?language=en_US) If you want to have them approved you have to re-arrange the scene, change the angle, etc. on both vertical and horizontal shoot and best not submit them at the same time. That usually works for me, but just shooting the same scene vertically and horizontally is not allowed on Shutterstock. Though I remember there was a time when they suggested doing exactly that in some of their older blog posts. 🤷
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Is anyone else having trouble getting horizontal and vertical versions of same subject approved? Many of my vertical images have been rejected for similar content lately.
No, but what exactly are you trying to submit? It's not allowed to submit the same image as both vertical or horizontal image. (https://support.submit.shutterstock.com/s/article/Why-was-my-content-rejected-for-Similar-Content?language=en_US) If you want to have them approved you have to re-arrange the scene, change the angle, etc. on both vertical and horizontal shoot and best not submit them at the same time. That usually works for me, but just shooting the same scene vertically and horizontally is not allowed on Shutterstock. Though I remember there was a time when they suggested doing exactly that in some of their older blog posts. 🤷
I think it's even adviced by some stock agencies to provide both horizontal and vertical image of same subject to offer options to byer, as long as it is two different exposures and not just cropped version of the same image.
Usually both versions are accepted, but now couple of those vertical versions keep getting rejected even if I resubmit them.
Actually if you scroll down the page in the link you provided there's:
Exceptions
* ¹ For photos and footage, 1 horizontal and 1 vertical orientation of the same unmoved subject is allowed.
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Per an SS "expert" AI is being used...
"it appears that the use of AI has been extended and includes exposure. However, this review process is still not balanced well. We have made this clear to the Shutterstock technical team who should be working in the issue.
In your case the images will have been ‘tagged’ once they are rejected by AI so if you want to resubmit again firstly you need to make a small edit which will remove the tag. Then you should check the ‘Previously Submitted’ box in Notes to Reviewers on the Submit Content page."
I followed his advice and they still got rejected within seconds. So far today, I've spent two hours going through rejected photos to re-submit. Not sure it's worth it at this point. Other agencies are accepting the same images.
Here's something interesting; same image different file name (see attached)...
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Hogwash and BS alert, the "Experts" know no more than we do. I thought that program had ended? Too bad, it's a waste of time.
Hopefully people here will explain to you about resubmitting without changing anything, without checking some fools box and still having images accepted on the second or third attempt. What's the mythology behind that fact? One regular here has used the brute force approach :) just keep uploading, up to five times, until they pass.
Yes you are correct AI of some sort, is used for an intake review, before anything gets anywhere near a review, that's not a secret it's obvious when the rejections take seconds and the reviews take days. AI and it was in the annual reports years ago, how SS uses a proprietary computerized review system for image intake.
My way of getting something accepted if the first time is a quick AI rejection, hasn't changed since the first images I uploaded for review in 2008, to pass the admissions test. Downsize and send it up again.
(https://i.postimg.cc/50B3yQ0Q/SS-downsize-cheeseburger.jpg)
No changes to anything, except the size, renamed to the same name plus SS added to the end. No other changes or editing and I used Irfanview, not some fancy software.
"Experts" just make up answers the same as some people here, based on what they think they see. (me too) No one knows and SS hasn't been talking.
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May be SS running out of space in AWS?
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Personally, I am annoyed about the discussion of the technical quality of images anyway. What do buyers expect for the pennies they pay?
I think it's a huge mistake to worry about this as a contributor. If shutterstock doesn't want the images, then just sell them somewhere else - for more money.
I have to agree wholeheartedly with this post.
I have uploaded to SS, DT and AS quite a few images I took with my Apple 11 phone. They get accepted and they sell.
I now use the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max with excellent results.
No, the phones will never replace professional grade cameras but they are excellent for stock.
Phones make the best cameras because they are always with you.
In today's environment good phone cameras make perfect sense and totally replace those not so cheap DX cameras. Why buy a Nikon Z30 for instance when your phone can already to the same job and probably better?
Of course opinions vary and this is my view.
So now I shoot with the Z9, Z7 II and the Apple Iphone. I think the other brands of phones and cameras are just as good but I'm used to Apple and Nikon.
I no longer use Wirestock. I recently submitted about 100 images with 90 of them rejected for "Poor aesthetic quality: Image aesthetics don't meet our requirements and the image cannot be accepted."
Well, poo, poo and stink on you. These images were accepted by the stock agencies I mentioned before.
The way I judge agencies is in how easy they are to work with.
Shuttertock ranks tops with me because they have the best seller support of all.
The best and about 90% of my sales are from SS.
A lot of people in this group have been really stupid, stupid for deleting their ports on SS.
If you think you are hurting SS because they gave you a bit of butt hurt then you are stupid!
SS does not even know you are gone and other people are making money that you could be making.
But to each his or her own, do as you have to do for yourself and ignore opinions that don't make sense.
The thing about Wirestock is why should I pay someone to sell my pictures when other stock agencies sell more for more?
Do as you have to do, and good luck to you.
If you don't like my opinions then block me. I don't care.
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I no longer use Wirestock. I recently submitted about 100 images with 90 of them rejected for "Poor aesthetic quality: Image aesthetics don't meet our requirements and the image cannot be accepted."
Well, poo, poo and stink on you. These images were accepted by the stock agencies I mentioned before.
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i've basically stopped uploading to WS too - the biggest problem is when they reject for stupid reasons, i then need to weed out from the submission what they rejected so that i can submit them to other agencies. combined with their incredibly slow review, what began as an intriguing alternative to adding metadata (worth the % they took) deteriorated
another reason was their refusal to admit their system had bugs. users were unwitting beta testers. plus they release (unanounced) 'upgrades' that trashes what previously worked.
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Phones make the best cameras because they are always with you.
The best part is that the security will never chase the stock photographer when you take photos indoor with a phone.
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I think SS is actively trying to cut down on the number of images. I just had an image rejected four times for four different reasons. Have had zero approvals this week. Maybe it's time to give up (even though I have said this many times and at this moment, this feels more like an addiction!)
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There's an image of an illuminated cave. I submit. Gets rejected in one second because "Content is underexposed, overexposed, or is inconsistently exposed." It's a cave, it's meant to be dark with only the illuminated section exposed correctly (which it is) but try telling the AI that. Anyway, I take it on the chin and up the exposure and resubmit. Again - "Content is underexposed, overexposed, or is inconsistently exposed." I guess there's no winning.
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Just resubmit ad nauseum.
Usually takes about 3 or 4 times, my record is 7 times, which is all a waste of my time.
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I think SS is actively trying to cut down on the number of images. I just had an image rejected four times for four different reasons. Have had zero approvals this week. Maybe it's time to give up (even though I have said this many times and at this moment, this feels more like an addiction!)
I agree, Shutterstock has gotten more critical in their image acceptance.
The way I see it you have two choices. Quit or learn.
Take the subject of grocery shoppers. It's popular today because of rising prices and shortages.
There are almost 80,000 images in this category. About typical for any category you chose.
Look at the images and compare them to yours. SS is not arbitrary in their rejections.
Yeah, the AI makes some real boners at times. Live with it.
Like I stated before SS could not care less if they lose you as a contributor, there are dozens eager and ready to take your place.
Learn from your rejections and roll with the blows.
Stock has become a real killer of a game.
Learn to compete or lose out. Nobody but you cares.
Think about it. You are competing with thousands of images in any category you chose to submit.
Good luck
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Think about it. You are competing with thousands of images in any category you chose to submit.
Good luck
Wow, amazing, I never thought about it in over 10 years of selling images. I have to thank you for your infinite wisdom I guess ::)
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Think about it. You are competing with thousands of images in any category you chose to submit.
Good luck
Wow, amazing, I never thought about it in over 10 years of selling images. I have to thank you for your infinite wisdom I guess ::)
I don't recall sending my post to you. I'm glad it does not apply to you.
Why are you afraid to post the link to your port.
In fact, why are almost all users of this group afraid to post the link to your ports?
I'm sure all of us could learn from that.
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Why are you afraid to post the link to your port.
In fact, why are almost all users of this group afraid to post the link to your ports?
I'm sure all of us could learn from that.
or at least lend some credibility to their opinions/complaints
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Why are you afraid to post the link to your port.
Because I saw the link to your port and thought, what's the point? What is anyone going to learn from a piddly little port like mine when they have access to the greatest shutterstock port of all time?
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Think about it. You are competing with thousands of images in any category you chose to submit.
Good luck
Wow, amazing, I never thought about it in over 10 years of selling images. I have to thank you for your infinite wisdom I guess ::)
I don't recall sending my post to you. I'm glad it does not apply to you.
Why are you afraid to post the link to your port.
In fact, why are almost all users of this group afraid to post the link to your ports?
I'm sure all of us could learn from that.
They are afraid of having their Mojo and Karma stolen from their top secret images that earn so much. Of course that doesn't include the people who complain about crappy sales, low returns and rejections.
Used to be people wanted to be anonymous because they were afraid of retaliation from agencies, for what someone wrote here. Most of that is old times, and the agencies don't bother reading here most of the time, except Adobe Mat and he's reasonable and fair.
I've said before, if someone doesn't want the agency to be angry or watching them (even though they don't) maybe the answer is don't post libelous and false accusations out of anger and frustration, just because your images don't make as much as someone thinks they should.
We are suppliers, agencies don't care, they don't owe us anything, they obviously don't pay fairly. Reviews are often hugly flawed, random, inconsistent and even the best places, there's a luck of the draw on who reviews the images. I don't find that the endless complaining or writing about how unjust and flawed the system is, does anything to change it.
Personally, people who are anonymous or have no links or attribution to their images, are unreliable sources for information and their opinions carry little credibility or weight. Easy enough the answer is, just discount and ignore the anonymous people and the trolls.
or at least lend some credibility to their opinions/complaints
That's the easiest point to recognize. Anonymous has no weight or value.
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Why are you afraid to post the link to your port.
Because I saw the link to your port and thought, what's the point? What is anyone going to learn from a piddly little port like mine when they have access to the greatest shutterstock port of all time?
so who you gonna believe? some with nothing to back up their views or someone with a visible record?
A small, public portfolio still outweighs the views of a large, hidden port
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so who you gonna believe? some with nothing to back up their views or someone with a visible record?
A small, public portfolio still outweighs the views of a large, hidden port
The funny thing is I didn't say a single thing to contradict any of you guys with ports up. All I said was my images were rejected on SS. Now, of course, you can choose to believe that I'm lying because I don't publicize my port but you need to ask yourself why would someone lie about something like this and how you can come to this conclusion just on the basis of the fact that I don't have a link to my port up?
If I needed dopamine hits, there are far better and easier places to get it than this forum, trust me.