If your content was rejected with “Content does not meet our minimum quality standards,” it may be because of one of the following issues:
Noise
Multi-colored dots or specks, blotches of color or random variations in brightness.
Noise appears as small dots and multicolored specks in the photo, especially visible in images produced in low-light conditions.
Film Grain
Visible particles of metallic silver in analog film.
Compression Artifacts / Macroblocks
Jagged square-shaped artifacts caused by image or video compression.
Pixelation
An effect typically caused by upscaling where the individual pixels that make up the image or video become visible to the viewer. For example, pixelation may occur when up-converting a 1920×1080 HD video resolution to a 3840×2160 4K video resolution.
Posterization / Banding
Abrupt changes of tone that appear as visible banding in an image or video.
We recommend
Shoot using the lowest possible ISO camera setting or film speed. Higher ISO values such as ISO 800, ISO 1600, and ISO 3200 will introduce digital noise or film grain.
Shoot with a DSLR instead of a point-and-shoot camera. Point and shoot cameras have smaller sensors which generally produce more noise.
Noise can be reduced in post-production but over-use of noise reduction techniques can cause loss of edge detail. So use it sparingly and only apply it to areas that need it.
To prevent compression artifacts, shoot in RAW and use non-destructive post-processing techniques when editing. If shooting directly to JPEG, use the camera’s highest image quality setting (JPEG Fine, for example).
Compress your video as little as possible while staying under the 4GB limit.
Submit your video in its captured format. Do not modify your clip’s resolution or up-res your content.
View your content at 100% magnification looking for signs of compression artifacts, color banding, or excessive noise/film grain issues. If any of these issues are detected, take steps to correct them before submitting them to Shutterstock (e.g., reshoot using different camera settings or attempt to correct the issue in post-production). It is always in your best interest to submit high-quality, technically sound content to increase your chances of acceptance.
Do not upsize/upscale or stretch a JPEG image beyond its original size.
If you don’t understand the reason for the rejection of your images or if you need additional clarification, you can always contact contributor support.