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The life of an image inspector for iStockphoto is one shrouded in mystery. Some of that is for good reason, since we don’t want to give away all our secrets to the competition, but there are parts of what we do, that I don’t mind sharing with you all here.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a brief introduction to what an inspector does: Basically, we inspect every photo submitted to iStockphoto and are charged with making the call, on whether or not it lives up to the required standards. In other words, if it is to be accepted into the collection, declined or passed back for some fixing by the contributing photographer.

What I can’t tell you about, are the details of how we work. These are trade secrets. Suffice to say that there is a system in place, which offers everyone on the team continuous training and all the technical tools needed to do the work. Furthermore, the team members constantly communicate and help each other, thus ensuring the highest possible consistency and the least number of mistakes.

One very important tool is a calibration unit. Every inspector works on a calibrated monitor. As every photographer should, too. If you get a lot of rejections for noise, isolation or pixel discoloration, it’s probably a sign that your monitor needs some TLC. These gadgets are well worth their cost for anyone working in color, whether as a photographer, designer og illustrator.

But in spite of all the cool tools and the secrecy, the job as an image inspector is really not that glamorous, though the hours are great and I am not complaining about the compensation, either. At the end of the day though, it’s countless of hours of looking at the details of other people’s photos. Thousands of them. It is largely my experience of having done this for a few years, that inspired me to start working on the guide.

When I first open someone’s image for inspection, the first place I look is at any visible blue sky. Then, I move on to darker areas - not the black parts, but the gradients between light and shadow. These two areas are the most common spots for noise. Next, I look for high contrast edges, where there might be chromatic aberration or large areas of solid color, which could contain banding or noise. If you get a lot of rejections for the reasons mentioned here, you will want to pay special attention to those particular areas. Typically, this type of noise comes from either too much tweaking or low quality cameras. Shooting in RAW at the lowest possible ISO will help reduce noise and banding.

So there’s a little taste of what it means to be an image inspector. And before you ask, this is not a job you can apply for. Those who have it, were all asked directly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a batch of photos to sort through.

The photo used for this post, was shot by Wikkie.

Think light, vibrant and “pow”. That is the result you’ll want to aim for, if you are looking to process your photos for maximum salability as stock images. In the following, I will be going over some of the most useful tools for attaining this look.

This is not meant to be a Photoshop tutorial. There are plenty of those around, as well as countless very good books on the subject. Instead of teaching you how to use Photoshop, I am aiming to give you a checklist of things to do or keep an eye on.

Keep in mind that this list of tips is designed to help you create a certain type of look, in the style that most people will be thinking of, when they think of stock photography. You don’t have to use all (or any) of these tips, in order to make bestseller photos, but they will give you a pointer in the right direction.

Pre-Post Processing

The better your source material is, the less work you’ll have to do in the digital darkroom. So try to pick locations, props, models and lighting that all works together. Learn the basics of photography as a craft and build on that. As wonderful as Lightroom, Photoshop and similar programs are, you’ll be killing yourself slowly, if you constantly have to try and save your images with post-processing. Also, I highly recommend shooting at the lowest possible ISO at all times and in RAW format, to give you easier and better ways to work without losing quality. All of this will help you avoid noise, which is one of the most common reasons, why an image might not be approved.

Make sure your monitor is calibrated. Most monitors are way off in their colors, to the point where you probably won’t believe your eyes, when you see what they look like after calibration. I remember doing mine over five or six times, thinking it had to be wrong. But it wasn’t. Buy yourself a calibration tool. Even the cheap ones will give you a better result than not doing it at all.

Always Post-Process

This is the most important piece of advice, I can give anyone wanting to start selling stock. If you ignore everything else I have written, remember this. Unprocessed digital photos generally look dull, lack contrast and may even be discolored. Even if you look at it and go: “This is the best photo, I’ve ever taken!” go ahead and do a little tweaking to it anyway. I promise, you won’t regret it. You will at the very least be wanting to give it a little more contrast (use curves instead of the contrast slider), do color correction and clear off any blemishes or dust particles.

Process in Batches

If you have a whole photo shoot to process, chances are that many of the images will have similar work done. If you work on them simultaneously, your results will be much more even, than if you try to do just one at a time. With RAW files, you can copy/paste the entire processing of an image to any number of shots, and then give each one little adjustments afterwards as needed. Using Lightroom, Aperture or even Adobe Bridge is essential to get a good workflow going, and especially so when working with larger series of images, so make sure you familiarize yourself with at least one of these tools.

Clean Up Your Photos

There are the obvious no-nos, such as logos, visible phone numbers, license plates and artwork. These must all be removed - in time you will become a master at avoiding having these things in your photos to begin with, but until then, clone them out. Also, remove blemishes, skin flakes, zits, sleep from the eyes and gunk from between the teeth of your models. Every single day, I see dozens of photos where this simple procedure could have at least doubled the usefulness of the work. While we’re at it, remove any distracting elements from the background too, and straighten any lines that were not meant to be crooked. Relevant tools: Clone stamp, healing brush and patch tool.

Curves and Overlay

Contrast is the easiest way to make your images pop, but don’t use the brightness/contrast slider. Instead, learn to master the curves tool and combine it with a few other tricks, such as using overlay: Copy your original image into a new layer, set the blending mode to overlay and turn the opacity down to about 20-40%, depending on how light your exposure is. You may want to apply this only on your main subject, to make that stick out even more, so use a mask to select just that area. Just don’t overdo it, or you will lose detail in the darker areas and possibly generate noise. You can also use Soft Light for a similar, but less harsh result. Relevant tools: Curves in RAW processing, Curves adjustment layers, overlay and soft light layers.

Airy Lightness

If most of your background is light and airy, focus will be more easily drawn to your actual subject. This also goes back to what you started with. If you shot an underexposed image in a dark alley, you will find it impossible to make the photo light and airy without degrading the quality beyond usefulness. Use bouncing and diffused lighting during the shoot to get rid of any hard shadows. In post processing, you can add lightness by toning parts of your image or certain colors. A gradient map of white and blue, pulled way back and on the background only, can work wonders. Relevant tools: Adjustment layers with gradient maps, color gradients, selective color and color balance.

Add Saturation

Be careful when doing this. Too much color will make highlights lose detail and add noise to any gradients (such as blue sky). But if you do it just right, a little added saturation can really make the image pop. I highly recommend doing this as part of your RAW processing. Relevant tools: Hue/Saturation.

Beware of Noise Reduction

Noise Ninja, NeatImage and other noise removal add-ons and programs seldom improve any images. In my experience, they remove too much detail unless used by someone who really know what they’re doing. Images become plasticlike and blurry from too much noise reduction, and adding sharpening afterwards only makes it worse.

Beware of Sharpening

Just like noise reduction makes an image blotchy and blurry, sharpening tends to make photos too hard. If your image is sold for print, the designer might want to sharpen it a bit first, but leave it to her to decide how much is needed. You can’t use sharpening to save out-of-focus images either, so don’t even try. Personally, I never use sharpening tools for stock. Instead, I recommend using High Pass in moderation.

Avoid Funky Filters

Fake motion blur, fake water ripples and similar effects look, well, fake. The important thing to remember here is, that you want your end result to look believable. Some filtering is fine, but if you take it too far, it just looks cheesy. Think of sci-fi movies: If the plot and acting rocks, you’ll find suspension of disbelief easier to do. If your image is good without any filtering, you can do more to it later at little or no cost, qualitywise. But if it’s that good, you probably won’t want to do much anyway.

Keep Your Client in Mind

If you think your buyer can turn your photo into a good black and white on her own, you should just upload a color version, and leave the conversion to her. And on a related note, just don’t make any sepia photos for stock. They are nice for artsy, retro looking prints, but you cut away 90% of potential buyers when trying to sell them sepiatoned images. Same goes for most toned images, no matter what the color, though selective toning to, say, the background of an image, can yield great results. There are exceptions, as with everything in life, but if you want to play it safe, don’t go there.

Just because an image looks good, doesn’t mean that it will sell well. Stock photography is first and foremost about making useful images. The concept is king and if you do too much to it afterwards, you are likely to take away from the impact of the original concept. Unless it was built around an idea that requires post-processing in the first place.

This post is part 15 in a series about my experiences with stock photography, tips and pointers, meant to offer a little inspiration to those interested in such things. Next up: An introduction to iStockphoto, where I sell my own work. For a complete and chronological list of articles, check out the Microstock Photographer’s Guide.