PHOTO: Artifacting on Ice Cream Sundaes

Hello Critique Forum!


I submitted two ice cream sundae photos and received an artifacting rejection for the vertical version. Here's the photo. Here's the rejection:

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission, entitled Ice
Cream Sundaes in Vintage Glass Dishes ( https://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/20048805/2/stock-photo-20048805-ice-cream-sundaes-in-vintage-glass-dishes.jpg)
for addition to the iStockphoto library for the following reasons:

This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is
commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing, in RAW
settings or scanner settings. Artifacting can also be introduced into an image
from the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.

 


I've been looking through it at 400% for awhile now and am unable to see the artifacts, though at this zoomed in distance  everything kind of looks like artifacts. I've found some chromatic aberration, which I will fix before I resubmit it, but no artifacts. Perhaps someone with a better eye can point me towards the area I need to work on? Thanks so much for your help!

The noise seems worst in the brown sauce behind the glass in the blue dish to me, but that part of the image is a bit noisy anyway and generally the out of focus areas are the same, especially in /around the darker areas. A bit of light, selective noise reduction should fix it. Its not the worst I've seen.

Sweet! Thanks so much for your response, Difydave. I was hoping it was something I could fix with a little bit of noise reduction instead of having to back off on the processing.

No need to do any further processing work on this, it shouldn't have been rejected. Any artifacting here is barely perceptible and entirely unproblematic for any usage. I've approved the file for you.

Awww...you're the best Donald! Thanks so much for your kindness - I greatly appreciate you taking a second look at it.