Tips on how to gain approval with Signelements

At Signelements we aim to offer our clients creative imagery that’s beautifully shot both technically and from an aesthetic perspective. When choosing which images to submit there are a few things you need to consider to give your work the best chance of being approved. Here are a few tips on what to look out for:

• Quality: Ensure your images are of the highest quality – If your images are low resolution, distorted, poorly retouched, poorly lit, or infinitely blurred they will be declined. JPG files in RGB mode at 300DPI, no less than 2400 x 1600 pixels (4megapixels) meet our standards. Amateur photographers tip: Use automatic mode in JPG format until you feel comfortable and experienced enough to use manual mode and RAW file format. JPG files need less editing.

• Diversify: Various subject matters and styles are highly welcome! Repetitive content becomes boring quickly. Think about supplying a range of subjects, colors, lighting and composition.

• Purpose & intent: Think about the suitability of the content you are uploading. What kind of audience does your content relate to? Profane, violent or adult content may be rejected if deemed inappropriate for our site.

• Curate: Look through your collection and select which images you believe are clearly defined, show diversity and are versatile to appeal to various audiences. Which images stand out? Remove any images which look almost identical to the previous. Only three to four images from the same shoot or collection should be included if you feel they are of a repetitive nature.

• Post production editing: Check the composition of your image, is the horizon line straight? Can you clearly see the subject matter? We like to see competent editing and so will the viewers of your content! If using Lightroom or Photoshop check the histogram to ensure correct lighting – If the histogram is pulling towards the left-hand side this depicts your image is A, underexposed or B, the image has a lot of blacks and shadows. The exposure may need to be increased if it is underexposed. Images in focus and are of high quality shouldn’t have an issue with sharpness. However, we often see over sharpening. This tends to give a harsh halo effect and a dark shadowed outline which spills into bright areas. Over sharpening can also cause too much noise (grain). We recommended using the adjustments under the detail tab in Lightroom. Only increase them slightly – anything over 50/ halfway is most likely too sharp.

• Consent: Please attach model/property releases as soon as you upload the images. We will not accept photographs of people without model consent. Store fronts which are visible need to have consent too. Pay attention to the background, is there anything distracting/ shouldn’t be there? We cannot accept images if we can clearly define a person or logo. Logos such as Coca Cola, Mercedes Benz, Kodak, Apple, Vodafone etc. are trademarked and therefore cannot be seen to endorse our clients’ output.

• Metadata: Your images need captions and keywords so people can find them. Use words which relate to your image. Think about what is happening in the photograph? Which items or type of person are being depicted? What’s the occasion, the weather etc. Ensure you do not upload double metadata otherwise the images will automatically reject and you will not be able to find them in the contributor area.

After considering all the tips above – get started uploading your portfolio! Submit images as JPG files in RGB mode at 300DPI. TIF, PNG, PSD and RAW files with CMYK color profile will be declined. Please ensure the resolution is no less than 2400 x 1600 pixels (4megapixels). We require a portfolio of 50 images to determine whether the portfolio meets our criteria.