I'm trying my hand at some stock photography again. My experience with Fotolia wasn't very successful and I'm hoping Adobe Stock will be better. I think I have just made my first mistake. I spent some time today post-processing 20 images and concentrating on keywords. No matter how good a photo is, if no one can find it there won't be any sales, hence the importance of keywords. This evening I looked at some of my competition. That was the mistake - I should have looked first before post-processing and uploading my own images.
Admittedly, the stock images I have looked at are quite catching, but - without exception - they are all saturated to hell. There are blue skies, seas and foliage, the colour of which you never see naturally. The images look like picture postcards, not normal photos. To get the same effect I would have to set my saturation level to 80% plus, in addition to winding up other settings. My post-processing technique has always been to recreate a fairly natural look, but at a quick glance, my natural-looking images look quite dull compared to the massively oversaturated versions.
Any suggestions? Virtually every stock image I have seen is enormously oversaturated, so it looks like the thing to do. Should I just forget trying to achieve a natural look? I can probably replicate the other images, but to me it seems a very unnatural thing to do. Presumably, they are processed this way purely to catch a viewer's attention quickly (so they sell) and looking natural isn't the point. Any general tips for PP for stock? I have very little experience.
Admittedly, the stock images I have looked at are quite catching, but - without exception - they are all saturated to hell. There are blue skies, seas and foliage, the colour of which you never see naturally. The images look like picture postcards, not normal photos. To get the same effect I would have to set my saturation level to 80% plus, in addition to winding up other settings. My post-processing technique has always been to recreate a fairly natural look, but at a quick glance, my natural-looking images look quite dull compared to the massively oversaturated versions.
Any suggestions? Virtually every stock image I have seen is enormously oversaturated, so it looks like the thing to do. Should I just forget trying to achieve a natural look? I can probably replicate the other images, but to me it seems a very unnatural thing to do. Presumably, they are processed this way purely to catch a viewer's attention quickly (so they sell) and looking natural isn't the point. Any general tips for PP for stock? I have very little experience.