How To Avoid Rejection in Photos: Similar Submissions
If you’re a Freepik’s contributor and work with photos, don’t miss this post!
You probably got your content rejected once or even several times. None likes to be rejected; we get that. But even professionals photographers make mistakes, so don’t worry. If you work hard and follow our recommendations, you’ll be able to create quality content and boost your downloads!
Rejection due to Similar Submissions is quite frequent among contributors. We know it’s sometimes tough to cope with the stock market demands and generate unique and original resources at the same time. However, it’s crucial you focus on diversity. It will make it easier for your content to be accepted and more users will reach your photos.
In this post, we give you some useful tips to prevent your photos from being rejected and to save time in the uploading process.
What is “Similar Submissions”?
You may wonder, what does this rejection reason mean exactly? Similar Submissions refer to those images that are similar to other resources. There are four main reasons why we reject your content due to similarity:
1. When you send pictures that are quite similar to other resources previously submitted by the same or a different author.
2. We also consider Similar Submissions images within the same photo session with little difference between them. We know that working with the burst mode in a session is quite useful to capture the perfect moment or, as Cartier-Bresson said, the decisive moment. However, this doesn’t mean you have to include all the images in your submission. Therefore, the selection process is essential to sort and select only the best pictures.
3. Avoid cropping the same image several times to add variation. We’ll consider your content Similar Submission if you repeatedly send cropped versions of the same image, whether it’s been accepted or published.
The following is an example of rejected content due to similar submission. Here appear multiple copies of an image with size variation but little difference between them.
4. Last (but not least), certain landscapes, places, or themes are quite frequent among our contributors. So, if we already have many images of a particular resource and your content doesn’t have the required quality, we’ll reject it. In this case, it will be rejected due to similarity and for not meeting the quality standards.
The Selection Process
Ideally, contributors that work with photos should follow these steps to obtain good results:
Shooting → Selection → Editing → Submission
The key step here is the selection process. Properly selecting your images will prevent your content from being rejected. So, before submitting your resources, filter and choose the best ones!
For the selection process, we recommend our contributors to use Adobe Bridge. Are you familiar with it? Well, for those who don’t know it, Adobe Bridge is a software that allows you to select the best resources easily and effectively.
But how does it work? Adobe Bridge makes it possible to label your resources and assign rates with stars or color labels. So, depending on the number of stars or the color you use, you can mark many files and sort them quickly. Let’s have a look at the following examples of the selection process in Adobe Bridge:
Step 1: selection of the best resources
Step 2: after comparing your photos, rate the best resources with stars
Step 3: these would be the images corresponding to the final selection
So, which aspects do you need to take into account when sorting your resources?
⋅ First of all, select only the best photos and make sure they aren’t similar. This will help you publish your resources and save a lot of time as you won’t have to tag invalid resources.
⋅ Ensure that photos are properly focused and have a right shutter speed. Select images where main elements are static (unless you’re looking for a specific effect).
⋅ In case you’re working with models, dismiss pictures with strange or meaningless facial expressions, closed eyes, etc.
Pro tip: Once you select your best resources, don’t forget to save them in an independent folder. This way, you’ll be able to find them later.
After this post, we hope you better understand the Similar Submissions rejection reason. By following these recommendations, you’ll be able to improve your portfolio and boost your downloads. Besides, you’ll save a lot of time as you’ll avoid tagging invalid resources!
