Reasons for Rejections

Giclée printing is the gold standard for producing museum-level quality prints. The quality of a Giclée print is far superior to other printing forms, including traditional inkjets. If you want to have a print that most closely matches an original, Giclée printing is one of the best processes. Giclée printers use up to 12 individual colors, allowing for smoother gradient transitions and a wider color gamut. For our customers, that means they will receive prints that have more depth and richness than traditional inkjets or 4-color printing processes.

However, the quality of a Giclée print depends on the quality of the image being printed. This is especially true with highly detailed Giclée prints with over 400% greater resolution than a computer monitor. Therefore, defects in an image that may not be visible on a computer monitor can be very noticeable when viewing a print.

Before Artrepreneur can turn your artwork into stunning and vibrant printed masterpieces, each file must go through a quality assurance review by our curatorial staff. If your work fails to meet the review criteria, you will be notified of the potential reasons for the rejection so that you may correct them and resubmit your work.

Reasons for rejections include the following:

Out-of-Focus or Pixelated. Your submissions must be sharp so that they look clean and crisp when they are printed at their largest size. An image that may look sharp on-screen may not be when seen at full size. Additionally, since images are made of tiny colored dots or pixels, blowing up an image too much will spread those pixels apart, creating a pixelated image lacking fine details. Please ensure that your images are sharp at detailed at the maximum print size you are submitting.

Poorly-Cropped. Images should be cropped only to include the printable work. Extraneous detail, such as a picture frame or a colored border, should be removed before uploading.  Since all Giclées printed by Artreprenur are cut to size, you can crop your images to any ratio as long as it fits within our size specifications.

Color Banding. Color gradients, such as those found in shadows or skies, require billions of pixels with slight tonal variations to make them smooth and seamless. Unfortunately, too much post-processing of 8-bit images can cause color banding because not enough colors are available to create smooth gradients, as shown in the image below.

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For more information on resolving color banding issues, see How to Resolve Color Banding in Your Images.

Excessive Digital Artifacts. Digital artifacts are unintentional, unwanted defects in photos. Artifacts can occur at any stage of the photographic process, including the camera equipment used, the photographic setting or lighting setup, or post-processing methods and software used. However, too many digital artifacts can result in a low-quality image, especially at larger sizes where they are increasingly noticeable. The following are examples of some common digital artifacts:

• “Blooming” is a type of noise where pixels on a camera sensor can collect too many photos of light,  brightening or overexposing the surrounding pixels. Most modern DSLRs have anti-blooming gates that help stop blooming.
• “Chromatic aberration” or “color fringing” occurs most frequently in images shot with wide-angle lenses. It presents as a color outline around high-contrast edges. It won’t’ be noticeable on the camera’s LCD screen, but you will notice it when editing at the actual print size. It may be even more pronounced in a Giclée print.
• “Jaggies or aliasing” refers to the visible jagged edges on diagonal lines in a digital image. Aliasing can look like stair steps when the pixels are large. Jaggies are less visible when pictures are shot with higher-megapixel cameras. Sharpening in post-production increases the visibility of jaggies.
• “Sharpening Halos” can show light lines around objects where sharpness is faked by making the edges more contrasty. Avoid over-sharpening to reduce these halos.

• “Noise” appears on images as unwanted or stray color specks, often shooting at a high ISO. It’s most apparent in the shadows and blacks of an image, often as small dots of red, green, and blue. In large images, these specks can be so pronounced that the image will be considered poor quality. However, this issue may be less apparent in greyscale images, looking more grainy than an aberration.

• “Color Cast” is an unwanted visible color tint to an image. They usually occur when white balance is inaccurate or light is contaminated with another color, such as light bouncing from a colored surface onto the photographed object or scene.
• “Vignetting,” also known as “light fall-off,” means darkening image corners compared to the center. Depending on the type and cause of vignetting, it can be gradual or abrupt. While vignetting can be used as a style or to focus the viewer’s attention on the subject, too much vignetting, usually created in post-processing, can be jarring and create artists or unwanted banding in the shadows.

Underexposed or Overexposed. Overexposure with respect to a digital camera means too much light hits the image sensor resulting in a washed-out or overly bright image lacking detail or contrast. In some cases, the image can be corrected when editing, but more often, the editing process results in banding or digital artifacts.  Overexposure can also occur in spots where a specific area of the image sensor is hit with such a bright light that it cannot record any information. The result is spots of pure white, lacking any detail.  Conversely, underexposed images are too dark and also lack detail. Exposure can often be increased in post-processing but can also result in banding or noise.

Curatorial Rejection. Our curators feel that the work does not align with our current curatorial programming. This applies to this specific work only and may not apply to other submissions in the grouping or series.

Unacceptable Content. The image doesn’t translate from the original to print media. The work has to function as a print in its own right. For example, specific sculptures or installations, such as those with mirrors, might be unacceptable because they can’t be expressed clearly as images.

Unsupported or Explicit Content. Content is unacceptable if it includes the types of prohibited content in our Terms of Service, Image Upload Guidelines, or Marketplace Rules, such as selfies, snapshots, promotional event images, pornography, hate speech, or copyright infringement.

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Our curators will look for these and other artifacts that may be present in the full-sized image. However, please note that the initial review process used the digital file only.  An additional review may be conducted when the work is printed.  Should we have concerns with the final print, you will be notified to correct the problems and ensure the buyers receive the best print possible.