Shutterstock Rejection - Photoshopping?

Two_In

Two_In

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Andrew
Edit My Images
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I submitted 10 images for consideration by shutterstock. All were rejected for this reason: 'Rasterization Quality: Illustration has rasterization issues such as blurriness and/or artifacting.'.

The images were photographs of my oil paintings. Which were reasonable photographs and lit well with studio lights. But I rarely take a photo of a painting that doesn't need some photoshopping, because the light invariably will catch at least a few artefacts in the surface of the painting (ie. the texture of the canvas). For processing I use PS elements. Adding a layer and then using the clone stamp tool to 'edit' out the unwanted highlights. Generally I resize the images ready for my POD business. They also require cropping. Then saved as a Jpeg, at maximum quality and Baseline Optimised.

Can I do anything to make them acceptable for Shutterstock?
 
Two_In said:
I submitted 10 images for consideration by shutterstock. All were rejected for this reason: 'Rasterization Quality: Illustration has rasterization issues such as blurriness and/or artifacting.'.

The images were photographs of my oil paintings. Which were reasonable photographs and lit well with studio lights. But I rarely take a photo of a painting that doesn't need some photoshopping, because the light invariably will catch at least a few artefacts in the surface of the painting (ie. the texture of the canvas). For processing I use PS elements. Adding a layer and then using the clone stamp tool to 'edit' out the unwanted highlights. Generally I resize the images ready for my POD business. They also require cropping. Then saved as a Jpeg, at maximum quality and Baseline Optimised.

Can I do anything to make them acceptable for Shutterstock?
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How much do you resize the images as this can cause rasterzation issues? Trying to enlarge too much will cause blurring/rough edges.
 
FlyPhot said:
How much do you resize the images as this can cause rasterzation issues? Trying to enlarge too much will cause blurring/rough edges.
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I just submitted my POD images which are resized large enough for a 36" wide canvas print (can't remember pixel size exactly).

I don't suppose just reducing the size would help? I wouldn't like to have to re-process the original photos.
 
Two_In said:
I just submitted my POD images which are resized large enough for a 36" wide canvas print (can't remember pixel size exactly).

I don't suppose just reducing the size would help? I wouldn't like to have to re-process the original photos.
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Which camera are you using (what mp is the sensor), as 36" is a pretty big image and it could be that you are causing issues by enlarging to that size (what pixel dimensions are the original RAWs)?
 
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Also, what is the file size of the images you uploaded (the final file size)?
 
Nikon D3200 Original size: 6016 x 4000 300dpi
 
Just a thought, I've saved the original PS files, as well as the Jpegs. Would that make it possible to do something with them?
 
Two_In said:
Nikon D3200 Original size: 6016 x 4000 300dpi
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and do you crop before you resize? and what is the file size in mb when you upload?
 
I probably do crop before resizing. A quick look at my Jpegs and they range from 14mb to 30mb.
 
Two_In said:
I probably do crop before resizing. A quick look at my Jpegs and they range from 14mb to 30mb.
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I think if you are sending in images that you've cropped, then resized to 36" wide you're probably causing problems with the quality. Although - caveat - i'm not an expert, it's just my experience of trying to get larger images printed and keeping the quality high enough.

edit to add: just looked online and for a print of 36" x 24" at 300dpi the file size should be 77mb, so you're reducing quality (on your largest file sizes) by my rudimentary maths (although happy to be corrected by someone who is far more experienced than me ;) )
 
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Two_In said:
Just a thought, I've saved the original PS files, as well as the Jpegs. Would that make it possible to do something with them?
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One tip for future reference: never work on the original files. Make at least two copies of them for archiving and then work only on a third copy.
 
I save as RAW ( as I shoot in RAW) - make a PSD copy to work on- save both and convert one to a JPG and save as - simple enough

Les :)
 
Two_In said:
Nikon D3200 Original size: 6016 x 4000 300dpi
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What were the pixel dimensions of the final image you submitted? (i.e., Horizontal x Vertical in pixels, as above). The dpi setting shouldn't matter.
 
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Retune said:
What were the pixel dimensions of the final image you submitted? (i.e., Horizontal x Vertical in pixels, as above). The dpi setting shouldn't matter.
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He said he enlarged to 36" width
 
FlyPhot said:
He also stated the image was at 300dpi - so not useless info ;)
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No, he stated that the original file was 300dpi although that's not entirely true because at that point the image is just pixels. PPI at this point is irrelevant.

You need to know what the settings where when he save the image.

When you save an image in PS and resize it you can choose to resize to a specific pixel size in which case the PPI is irrelevant because pixels are pixels are pixels.
If you choose to resize to an inches value then PS needs to know how many pixels per inch you want.

300px per inch will result in an image 10800px wide which means the image has been upscaled.
150px per inch will result in an image 5400px wide which means the image has been downscaled.
 
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It's much less confusing to think in terms of pixel dimensions rather than size in inches, ppi, dpi, megabytes or other things that don't really matter if you know how many pixels you have. This and the image quality are all the stock site will care about, unless you have a tiff that's bigger than their file size limit. One common mistake is to resample the image unnecessarily, changing the pixel dimensions by interpolation when trying to make the image a certain 'size'. If these images haven't been cropped, they should have the same 6016 x 4000 pixel dimensions as the original. Anything larger and something has gone wrong. Anything smaller than you'd expect from the crop and something else has gone wrong, probably unnecessary downsampling.
 
Retune said:
It's much less confusing to think in terms of pixel dimensions rather than size in inches, ppi, dpi, megabytes or other things that don't really matter if you know how many pixels you have. This and the image quality are all the stock site will care about, unless you have a tiff that's bigger than their file size limit. One common mistake is to resample the image unnecessarily, changing the pixel dimensions by interpolation when trying to make the image a certain 'size'. If these images haven't been cropped, they should have the same 6016 x 4000 pixel dimensions as the original. Anything larger and something has gone wrong. Anything smaller than you'd expect from the crop and something else has gone wrong, probably unnecessary downsampling.
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100% agree with this. Resizing to inches and worrying about PPI is really only useful when printing the image.
 
Back to the beginning, and those 'unwanted highlights' - these would normally be controlled by the exposure set. If you had ever used slide film you would've learnt that a key to exposure was to protect the significant highlights (from blowing to white).

Hopefully you are shooting in raw, which allows for greater tonal adjustment in processing - having protected the highlights, you can knock the overall tonality of the image into shape.

Then, when things are right, but keeping the original raw as archive material, you can 'export' the processed image as a tif or jpg to suit the chosen purpose. At that stage, if there's no particular reason to resize the image, then it would be exported at its original pixel size. An uncompressed jpg is a pretty universal format.
 
Is there a way of re-saving the image in such a way that it disguises the Photoshopping? I'm guessing that Shutterstock has an automated checking system and automatically refuses images that have significant Photoshopping - info located in the saved file. On the surface I don't think there's anything to complain about, I think I did a good job myself and there isn't anything visible that ruins the image.
 
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