Raster ilustration inspection

If vector illustrations are inspected by vector illustrators, wouldn't it make sense to have raster illustrations inpected by illustrators rather than by photographers? Although they are the same filetype, they have little else in common and can't really be reviewed fairly by someone who is strictly a photographer. It has certainly been a battle to build my portfolio. 

Why?  What is so different about the overall aesthetics of a drawing and a photograph?  Most of the customers are not artists, either, and would probably like the same images as the reviewers.


After all, this isn't an art gallery.

I hope that inspectors judge files based on their usefullness, usability and technical quality and and not on aesthetics as that would be subjective. A raster illustration is very different from a photograph as far as its usefullness and usability are concerned. A photographer may not understand how a designer would use one of my images for example.

I think the reviewers are designers, not photographers.

I see where you're coming from on this Stacey - you could trace off your rasters in Illustrator now as we are allowed to upload illustrations containing fonts - the trace tool can be fine tuned to pick up the fine details of your hand-drawn text etc - it's worth a go - you'd then be inspected by people employed to inspect illustrations - logically, you would assume they would at least be illustrators themselves as you point out!


@Darla - there are many, many aspects to both a photograph and an illustration that make the inspection far more involved than just the aesthetic - as saw points out - whether you personally like something or not is subjective - the reviewers are able to put aside their visual preferences and judge the FILE against the criterea for acceptance.

I'm planning to try a few vectors sometime soon but I still think raster illustrations deserve a little more love here. The buyer has the option to buy a small or extra small file and save a little money.  Then they can vectorize it if they want. Also, I think some traditional illustration styles lose something in the conversion. 

Agree with You saw, I also think it would be great if raster illustrations were inspected by illustration istock team.

They will be now. Here's the latest post about rasters

^ Ah. So that's why my most recent scans are hitting the Executive queue? I will read on ...

Is this how its going to work ? Images are going to be delayed from now on because they are being sent to the Executive queue ?

Yes, it's the only way we can flag them in the inspection Q and ensure they're going to the right team. These files are being inspected daily so there won't be any strange delays compared to the regular photo Q, in fact inspections might go faster now that they're going to the correct inspection team.

Can we have an update ? I have a whole bunch sat in the executive queue, and judging from when photos uploaded at the same time were accepted, I would say the executive queue is currently 3 to 4 days behind.

^ On the plus side, Duncan, this is the only time I'm likely to see over 40 straight acceptances, which is what I have today.

The team's still in the training process and we're still ironing out the kinks but it won't be long until inspection time goes back to normal (it's already very close).
Remember this is an entirely new procedure: We're changing 13 years worth of inspection workflow. We're working as quickly as we possibly can but like I said it shouldn't be long until things are running much more smoothly.



Yay, that's great news! Congratulations

Oh, thank the Lord!