A couple things are key tipoffs:

- Lighting. If the picture looks like there is light coming from artificial "studio" sources, then it is most likely professional. In other words, if the model's body looks glossy, or if it seems that the light source is behind the camera, rather than above it or somewhere else in the photo, or that extra lights have been set up for the photo, it is probably professional.

- Picture quality. Professional pictures typically have a much higher quality than amateur pics. That is to say, amateur pics are typically grainy and look like they've been taken with a digital camera, by an "amateur", while pro pics look like they've been taken by a "professional" photographer. Also, professional pics will typically be set up and framed precisely to look a certain way.

- The girl. The girls in professional pics are models, and as such, look like models. They are probably wearing make-up, and just look "model-ish". Amateur girls look like the types of girls you would see in everyday life. However, some sites like Abby Winters have everyday-type girls in very natural settings with no make-up. You can still tell that these pics are pro, however, because their quality level is typically very high. While this is a very subjective qualification, it's still a good guideline to tell whether the pic is pro or not.

- Posing. If the girl in the pic or pics is doing various poses (especially pouty, "sexy" poses), and it doesn't fit any of the amateur pic qualities mentioned above, then it is probably pro.

These are just some general guidelines of how to tell a pro pic from an amateur pic. In the end, you have to make a judgement call with each pic you post. To adapt an old saying, if it looks professional, it probably is.

ok...thanks 4 the info..

To add to what Fango has said- a professional image may also have been subject to some serious post-production editting, photoshopping etc.

To show just what a difference this can make to an image, check out this- its only about a minute long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcFlxSlOKNI

A sign of this is that the model looks just a little unnatural- skin unnaturally smooth and belmish free etc.

Here is a "before and after" example- same person, taken at the same time- but notable differences.

Well, let's be clear:

Any photos that were produced for a paysite, OR any photos that "look professional," no matter if some schmoe shot them in his garage and no money changed hands, should not be posted here. Setting a light is not rocket surgery, nor is operating a DSLR. More and more, non-pros are shooting "pro-looking" pics. That's why I think it's important to make it clear that you guys are looking for a particular aesthetic, and that "pro-looking" pics are unwelcome regardless of pedigree.

The site are looking to maintain a particular aesthetic, it's not just about whether they were produced for a paysite. That much is apparent from the pattern of which photos are rejected and which pass muster. While I have no problem with that policy, I think it needs to be made clear, as I think people who shoot their own photos and happen to be good at it would be a bit discouraged if they didn't understand the rules and their photos are rejected as "professional."

Perhaps it would be more clear if you said "professional-looking OR stolen photos are not welcome" since they ain't the same thing...

I too have struggled with this issue, i have many pictures that i have taken of my now ex wife over our 25 year old relationship going to back to college in 1979 ... most of the pictures with poloroid, 110mm, and not long after, 35mm color and black and white, and most of them with a pentax manual 35mm camera without a flash ...

I met her when she was 18 and model she was not and model she never was, but beautiful she was and she knew for the most part the poses i looked for and most of the pics were spontaneous snapshots taken with a lamp or two placed strategically maybe with the lampshade tilted or removed or a hat or see through piece of clothing dulling the light ...

i finally scanned them all, and to me many of the images were extremely awesome ... but since I never cared properly for the negs or the original prints, many of the images had extreme dust, scratches, hair, dirt, fading and other defects ...

as time was available, i have since used what little i knew with programs like paint, paint.net and the photo editing software package that came with my hewlitt packard scanner (i had never used this stuff before) to slowly start to "fix" some of the images that i thought were more awesome than others ... for a first timer, i thought i did pretty well with a few of my favs, many of them i spent several hours even fixing them pixel by pixel using paint ...

i posted some of these pics on a famous website that hosts such pics and while they published some of the rough ones (which i thought in retrospect that were awful and still do), and they rejected the ones that i thought were awesome that i fixed as being "pro" yet all the qualities, the model, the setting, the exposures, were the same ... and i ve been discouraged in posting them ever since ... the message to me was you want to see the raunchy awful ugly ones of my wife, that was good, the good pics (i.e. the lighting the model the exposure, the "fixing") were pro and as a result, were NOT good. Just cause someone gets a lot of it right doesnt make it pro, and it was discouraging ...

Sorry for the lengthI'm trying to understand the guidelines, I find them very subjective. The important part of my reply, my attempt at summarizing the guidelines so I can see if I've understood, is at the bottom in bold.

To be clear about one thing: I have no problem with the set being taken down, even based on aesthetics alone and no concrete evidence, I just want clearer guidelines. I do think, however, that the set in question is worth discussing because while it may be as clear cut as you say it is from a moderator's point of view, I think it's very confusing to someone trying do decide whether to post a particular set of pictures.

The second link makes sense, since the photos were professionally shot but not intended as porn.

The first link, though, confuses me more rather than less. I'd bet the bulk of the professional-looking photos in the thread were shot professionally or semi-professionally but were either vanity projects or intended as model portfolio pics for model wannabes (some I'm certain are the latter). These fit in with my understanding of the rules based on what you've said.. but there are a few pics I'd bet can be found on pro sites (one in particular I"m pretty sure came from either SG or Richard Kern, but I haven't tried to look it up). That said, I think their posting can be justified (and legally would fall under 'fair use') since the nature of that thread is discussing and illustrating something that's happening frequently rather than just "here's some hot girls" (which is clearly what my thread's about). If some of those pictures were posted in series, with zips etc, in a thread like mine and this was thought to be OK I'd be really baffled right now though.

While I'd agree that it is quite likely that the set I posted was shot professionally, and probably was on some sort of paysite at some point in order to find its way to Usenet, your made-up number of 99 percent is too high (I can make up statistics too, and I'd say 62.0723% of series with similar qualities turn out to be pro). It isn't poorly lit but not really pro-level either (diffuse lighting, not enough diffuse fill lighting to kill shadows, etc. compare to DDG). The location looks like a hotel suite or an office and these are the type of places low-end pros frequently use, but amateurs do too.

As for the girl, makeup is minimal, and girl is fashion-model-type not adult-model-type, and has natural, small boobs (although there are sites like MET Art and Hegre that specialize in that type, and she'd likely make the cut at these sites).

Poses can easily be copied, if I shoot my own in the near future I've already planned the poses I want to copy. Mine won't look as good as this series but the girls will likely be in the same range looks-wise and I expect they're already good at posing as they work in titty bars.

The images might be enhanced slightly in photoshop but they're pretty natural and if anything's been done at all it's limited to color correction and maybe a little exposure correction. File names and the length and consistency of the series suggest a pro site, but lots of people rename files so that too is inconclusive as far as I can tell.

'Pedigree'-wise, the pics were downloaded originally from Usenet (alt.binaries.nospam.amateur.female). Every Usenet pr0n leecher knows that "amateur" groups are littered with pro photos and spam, and these were posted by "Tin Man" and also by "Kinda Shy" (sure about the 1st, not the 2nd) both of whom seem to post the same stuff everywhere repeatedly regardless of whether it's amateur or pro, and when I lost my hard drive I replaced the pics by downloading them from Imagefap (I have the same username on there, it's linked to my account, the series is the first "favorite" I added there and shows up on my profile page). I've Googled and Tineyed repeatedly and obsessively and can't find anything on this girl.

Try looking at it from a new poster's point of view: most of us who are interested in posting don't actually know the pedigree of the images we've collected (aside from what we've shot ourselves) and we've downloaded stuff that's been kicking around the Web or Usenet for years (or in some cases decades). On sites like Imagefap there's a lot of ambiguity as to what a picture's origins are.

Quote:
edit: You also conveniently ignored the second two parts of my checklist: the girl, and posing. Pay site models and poses have a very specific look to them that immediately tip them off as being pro, in a way that not just the lighting and picture quality alone do.
No I didn't, as I didn't think it needed explaining that every pretty girl isn't a model, every person who has an idea of how to pose a model isn't a photographer, and every girl who poses well isn't a professional model (quite a few aren't, unless you count titty bar dancers, ballet dancers, etc. as 'pros').

I find the notion that you can tell by the girl and the pose too ambiguous and subjective to help me at all in deciding which images to avoid posting. The fact of the matter is, without identifying the site, we don't actually KNOW if our example here is pro (and there's a lot of stuff out there like this). Your guess may be a good one, but it's just a guess.

All of that said, let me see how I understand the guidelines:

Anything that is known to have come from a pay site will be deleted, regardless of whether the poster is aware of its origin.

Anything watermarked will be deleted, regardless of whether the website that watermarked them actually owns the rights to the pictures.

Anything that looks too much like a pro series, even if it can't be proven to be, will be assumed to be and be deleted, unless an adequate explanation of the pics' origins are given, or they are illustrative of something being discussed.

Is that it? Do I understand yet? Or is there something else I need to know?