Probably not anyone with a decent camera.Originally Posted by Phil D.
I have gotten a couple photos accepted on a.net taken with my old point and shoot where I used it, though, and then I've had others photos rejected where I *didn't* use it but was accused of doing so. I specifically had one appeal response that said "too much neatimage" when I had never even touched it on that image (it was a shot of a JAL 747 that had some "interesting" reflections that looked maybe oddly smoothed-over, but that was just the way those reflections looked on the smooth white skin of the plane). That basically cemented it for me that *some* of their screeners just don't even have any idea of whether something's been digitally manipulated or not, even just to reduce noise. That's pretty much when I gave up even trying to submit things; it was a situation similar to this, I guess. But I believe at that time there were many people complaining about the same thing; I do know there were a lot of newbie screeners that had just started up, so maybe it's better now.
I'm looking at the Song photo on a calibrated Apple 23" Cinema Display HD and I don't see what the screener apparently saw. If I *really* had to guess at what he/she saw as "incorrect use of features or intentional alteration", I would say maybe it's the rear wheels (the actual wheels) that are the problem; they're completely blacked out, whereas the shadow from the wings doesn't look like it should be quite that strong. They may have thought the contrast had been bumped up too high and then the white point set incorrectly. (Again, different screeners could and obviously do see things totally differently, though.) Could probably be fixed by starting from the original again. It would be that much easier if you've got a RAW file of it, which would probably have a bit more dynamic range that you could exploit, and without being destructive to the image.
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