PHOTO: rejected palm trees

Sigh...the agony of a rejection. I'm not seeing any artifacts viewed at 100%. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks again!

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission, entitled Looking up at a cluster of palm trees ( https://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/23236694/2/stock-photo-23236694-looking-up-at-a-cluster-of-palm-trees.jpg) for addition to the iStockphoto library for the following reasons:

This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing, in RAW settings or scanner settings. Artifacting can also be introduced into an image from the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.

Link to full size image below:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/97539346/DSC_9083.jpg

You are having a hard time seeing artifacts in this and your previous critique. Both, particularly this one, are loaded with unacceptable artifacts, noise and chromatic aberration. Imagine looking at a palm leaf in your hand, it would appear solid green, there would be no splotches of dark or light, or blue, purple or red. It's a green leaf and your picture needs to show nice green leaves. This image is strongly backlit, without fill flash or reflector of some sort, the underside of your leaves would be dark. One can only assume, you attempted to recover the dark areas by making adjustments while post processing. Don't frustrate yourself over the agony of a rejection, take your time, learn your lighting and work on something other than problematic back lit situations if you don't have the equipment or skill to do so yet.

I also struggle to spot artifacts. When I get rejected for that reason and it is not obvious where they are, I usually reduce the size of the photo and resubmit. 9/10 times it goes though ok.


You do have a lot of CA in this photo. If you look at the leafs, you will clearly see the blue edges.


As a rule of thumb, when ever you have a light and dark edge next to each other, that is where you will mostly find CA. So when you inspect your photo prior to submitting, look at all of the contrasting edges and clean them out.


 

Thanks BanksPhotos and Frogman for your comments.

I missed the CA on the left palm but I wasn't rejected because of the CA (not to be confused with artifacts which is different). Maybe it's just semantics...CA, artifacts, noise, compression = artifacts rejection.

It's not only the left palm frond with CA, most of them have really unnattractive cyan fringing which is viewable at screen size, let alone 100 per cent. In many places the cyan splotches across the leaves themselves, distorting the colour - and making it impossible to remove cleanly. The leaves and darker areas are noisy, overall giving the impression of a file where the shadow detail has been pushed too hard. In some areas eg the top left hand leaf, it looks as though a rather clumsy attempt has been made to remove colour fringing (maybe purple fringing) as there are desaturated areas in the sky around the leaves, and in places the leaves themselves are also desaturated.

The combination of chromatic aberration, poorly removed chromatic aberration and over pushing of the shadow detail giving unnacceptable levels of noise and colour distortion are what make this file not stockworthy. A shot like this needs better control of light (eg with subtle use of fill flash or reflectors, or choice of different time of day) and a lens that is less prone to CA - although high contrast lighting like this makes it almost inevitable.

I think you need to look at your workflow, from the in-camera settings right through to LR or PS  or whatever image editing software you using. All of the advice above is spot on. I have the D800 and have zero rejections,over 600 uploads, for CA, artifacting  on a huge range of subjects right from 100 iso to 1600. Incl. 1600 iso 36mpx at F2

You could look at CA as "optical artifacting", i.e. an optical effect which produces something in the photo which wasn't actually present. Just as compression, noise etc are various types of digital artifacting.

Thanks all.

It was accepted after resubmit.

(Edited on 2013-03-03 07:28:11 by ChenRobert)