How do you test photos for stock suitability?

[Aleksey]

Hello everybody! My question is for both reviewers and submitters and i mean not а plot of the picture or а scope of it's use. And also i don't speak about common sense and naked eye tests, when you see a technically unsuitable photo and reject/recycle it. There are such things like holes instead of white cloud, or other things unknown to me because of my very small experience, which annihilate market quality of a picture. What tools do you use to find such bugs? May be it is 'Eyedropper tool' and Info window in PS, may be playing with brightness and contrast? Оr some other soft?

[Syates]

Aleksey, do you mean what criteria in general decide if an image gets accepted? Images get at 100% reviewed so they have to be good at this size, sometimes you have an image that looks great at blogsize or med web size, but if you look at it at full size, you find all sorts of things (noise or color fringing for example) that makes it not suitable for stock. Some sites are more strict in their quality guide lines and others more relaxed. Does that help? SY

[Aleksey]

Sybille Yates, no i don't mean declarative rules of almost all (micro)stocks.
I mean how do you find such mistakes like dirty not contrast black colors, or white color without any percent in cmyk if it is not an isolated image (i know such things a very bad for printing in journals for example). Or may be it is not a point of reviewing?

[Syates]

All sites I submit to, ask us for rgb color space, I don't think any micro site will test them in cmyk color space also. Obviously our monitors are calibrated and we, I assume most of us, have the possibility to download images into Photoshop. But checking them for quality in different color spaces might be perhaps little bit offer the top. SY

[Aleksey]

It is not a rare case when photos are declined, but the reason is not fully covered by the standard phrase of reviewer...
on the other hand you are reviewing a very big amount of photos every day..
How many time do you spend on an average photo?
What is average route of your eyes on a monitor?

[Syates]

What is average route of your eyes on a monitor?

ROfl, I don't think there is an average route for my eyes  It depends so much on the image itself, for example where the focus is/ should be. Means for a portrait: are the eyes sharp? I spent much more time with the images I reject then with the ones I approve to make sure that I don't make a mistake, and often I change my opinion during the process. For example "focus": if I expect the focus to be in a certain place and it isn't, I will look around the where the focus actually is and consider what the photographer wanted to achieve by placing the focus in this place, and often I will accept then the image. There is no average reviewing time for an image, some take longer, some are quicker. SY

[Aleksey]

I don't want to get a formalization of creative process -- i wan't to believe that there is a mystery... 

[Syates]

I don't think there will be ever a true formalization, you can't formalize creativity and the true mystery of stock is actually: Why do some images sell at all and why some only on some sites? The true mystery for me are the buyers, SY

[Talya]

I will try to rephrase Alexey’s question.
For example, let’s take a photo of an object isolated over white. When I edit the photo, at the end of the process I always go to adjustment/levels and pool it all the way to the right to make sure there are no unwanted pixels left at any corner on my picture.   I would not trust my eye on this one.
Do you use any trick like this or you just trust your naked eye?

[Aleksey]

Talya, thank You very much -- i have no chance to show my question in my english as you did it 
Два чая в двести двадцать второй : )

[Syates]

I will try to rephrase Alexey’s question.
For example, let’s take a photo of an object isolated over white. When I edit the photo, at the end of the process I always go to adjustment/levels and pool it all the way to the right to make sure there are no unwanted pixels left at any corner on my picture.   I would not trust my eye on this one.
Do you use any trick like this or you just trust your naked eye?

When I isolate, what happens rarely, I use the magic wand to test for stray pixel, reviewing I look at it at 100%, paying especially attention to borders and corners, I check isolation completely, means not just zoom in, I browse the whole image at 100% up and down and left and right, and after having checked too many I feel cold, because all this white reminds me of snow ;-) Does this help? Please note other reviewers and other sites might be different! We the contributors should be our own, harshest, reviewers, SY

[Aleksey]

Sybill, but isolation, i think,is only 1/999999(9) of all amount of things that we need to check... Do you has any other lines in checklist? In any case thanks for trick with magic wand!

[Aleksey]

What about checking histogram in all channels? Do a photo with one channel blank has any chances? (Question inspired by Dan70 experience)..

[Susan]

You ask a very good question Aleksey and those of us that can completely answer that question most likely have near 100% acceptance rates.  Something I strive to obtain.

1. I try to shoot images that I think designers will need and I try to make sure they will be easy to use.  (they will not need extensive photoshop work to include in the designers project)

2. If I am shooting for an isolation, I light the background 1 to 2 stops brighter than subject and try to allow as much distance as my workspace will allow between the subject and background... so that my background lights do not negatively affect the subject.

3. I hand isolate the areas that are not completely white in the background ( these are usually minimal) I delete these and then I use the magic wand to select the white background to see if there are any wholes.  I fix those (contract by 1 pixel) and then to be sure  everything is clean I delete the selection.... that way I am assured that my isolation has a true RGB #FFFFFF background.  For some sites I also save the selection as a path... however SS deletes any paths when they convert it to the form they sell. So I don't do this so much anymore.

4. For all images I try to expose so that I will not have noise in the shadows while still not blowing out the highlights.

5. I try to follow good composition rules so that I will not need to crop

6. When looking at natural light before I take an image, I try to make sure the subject has adequate light from the right angle so that I don't have any areas that are under exposed or have heavy shadows.

7 . I continue to add to my camera gear so that I have the best equipment I can afford.  This goes along way to assure good images.  ( I would really love to be able to afford a 85 1.2 canon lens and the upcoming 5D)

8. I take my time to get good sharp images... paying special attention to the points of focus that are most important for each image. I often use auto focus and then fine tune manually.  I use a tripod with most of my images to assure they are sharp.   

9. I spend my off time learning as much as I am able to improve my images... such as learning studio lighting, photoshop and strobist techniques, how to better utilize the capabilities of my equipment. The list goes on.

[Aleksey]

Thank You very much, Susan, for Your complex and experienced points to many 'i' in questions; not only for my, that had been asked!