Why are my photos being rejected for noise, grain, or softness when they look sharp to me?

Question

I’m a beginner photographer and some of my images are being rejected by stock sites for issues like noise, grain, or poor quality at full size, even though they look sharp to me. One example was shot on a Canon 6D with a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L on a tripod at 1/25s, f/14, ISO 100, and edited in Lightroom. What image-quality problems should I check for before submitting photos for print or stock use?

stock-photography lightroom sharpness jpeg image-quality

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

user4262 · Answer

First, this is a really nice photo! Well done. If the folks at Shutterstock don't like this one, print it and hang it on your wall.

I think my photos look sharp but is there anything that I might be doing wrong?

Here are some of the things I can see, and I'm not nearly as eagle-eyed as a photo editor would be:

chromatic abberation: CA is most prominent in the vertical lines on the left side of the image, but you can see it all over.
dust: This is probably just a little dust on the sensor and easy enough to remove in post, but if you didn't remove it they'll probably spot it in a second.
blotchy: There are some areas where areas of color are well defined when you wouldn't expect that. For me, the most noticeable one is the yellow area in the reflected sky, which looks a little like a stain. There are also some pinks in the sky that look a little blotchy at full size.

It's hard to tell about noise since JPEG compression introduces a lot of artifacts, like the halos around buildings and muddiness in areas of fine detail.

Why are my photos being rejected for noise, grain, or softness when they look sharp to me?

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