Quality Control Advice

[moopy goops]

It's been quite a while since I've posted here so let me start by wishing everyone a very happy new year, I sincerely hope 2016 is a rewarding, creative and happy one.
I could really do with some critical advice
I have been using another photo sharing site which along with advice and critique also offers the chance to sell your shots. I thought I'd try and play with the big hitters as it were and see how i got on (as a way of gauging my ability and saleability )
The response from the people who use the site was generally positive however when I uploaded the photos onto their 'market place' area I received these rejection messages telling me that at 100% magnification they displayed problems.
However try as I might I can't see any obvious signs of post processing, over sharpening or lens spots etc. I'm not saying they aren't there but can someone please show me what they're talking about so I can rectify the problem. PLEASE
The site I'm referring to is 500 px and here is a copy of their message:
LICENSING ERRORS
We noticed some technical issues that may lower the saleability of your photo. Please zoom in at 100% and check overall image quality for these common problems: compression damage (visible pixels) / digital noise / colour fringing / banding / visible retouching / outlines caused by over-sharpening / dust or water spots / dead pixels / soft or out of focus / damage caused by filters such as HDR. If possible, please make corrections and re-upload a better quality version. For more information check out this article from our Content team: http://bit.ly/PrimeQuality. Please also note, if you have added watermarks, signatures, borders, or personalized text, they need to be removed before re-uploading your high resolution file.
And here is the photo;

I really appreciate you bothering to take the time to read this long winded post and if you can help me I'd love to hear from you
merci beaucoup
m

[Black Pearl]

At a guess they are referring to the heavy Tone Mapped look to your shot. While I appreciate it is a fashionable look amongst some groups in general it just looks over processed and fake so will narrow your market severely.

* Try to dial down the processing on the sky until it looks natural.
* Back off the very hard shadows so you get some detail back in them.
* See if you can recover any detail in the windows as they're over exposed and look a bit odd.
* I'm not convinced the shot is level - I can just about live with the converging verticals but at least one of them needs to be straight to stop it looking wonky.
* It looks over saturated so a softer approach to the colour might make it look better.

[moopy goops]

Thanks Robin, good analysis !

[DanK]

Robin has made some good suggestions. However, they wrote:

Please zoom in at 100%

If they were concerned about artifacts visible at 100%, folks here will only find those if you provide a link to the full-size image. Many artifacts of that kind are obscured when an image is reduced to the size you provided.

[Shadowman]

Robin has made some good suggestions. However, they wrote:



If they were concerned about artifacts visible at 100%, folks here will only find those if you provide a link to the full-size image. Many artifacts of that kind are obscured when an image is reduced to the size you provided.

I just wonder if they spotted the artifacts at normal viewing distance or if they had to zoom in? If it can be spotted at normal viewing distance then it won't matter what size the image is uploaded. Most of Robin's suggestions were clearly visible at normal distance. I will say that their critique is very beneficial to Mat, rather hear it from the guardians at the gate than an unhappy customer.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Mat,

My take on their message is that it is very generic, this is apparent from the long list of things, many of which do not appear to apply to your image and the 'generic-ness' may even apply to the advice to view at 100%.

Can I ask a question - when you took the photo, was the ratio of illumination inside the structure compared to the sky as it appears in the image?
i.e. was the dome brighter than the sky?

It may be this ratio, that I suspect you have tone mapped, they are objecting to - because it looks unnatural (or at least, without an obvious explanation).

Robin's list is good, but if 100% is relevant, Dan makes a good point about us needing to see it at 100% too.

HTH, Dave

[Brev00]

I would just find another image in my catalogue that I like just as much but processed minimally. Some work in raw processing, sure, but an image without much noise to begin with and little extra sharpening. No HDR, for sure. See what they say to that. Don't play with the pixels!