Darla Hallmark

You downloaded a thumbnail. Bravo.

The object is to CREATE images, not find them.

It's the icons that look like naked people.

Did you use any trademarked names? The name of the boat, for example. The building might be on a list of protected places. What is it?

Just a note, since you didn't mention it: Only use photos you own the rights to.

The auto-generated jpg previews only see the objects, not the artboard. So, they get cropped right to the edge of the design. It's Shutterstock's fault your vectors look like crap.

Even with certificates, the vectors are NOT YOURS. Besides, the certificates do not specify that you can resell the images. You purchased certain rights, but not the copyright. Here's a hint: It costs way more than $4 to buy a copyright.

Check the settings on your camera. You want to be taking pictures at the largest setting. At least 2000 pixels on the short side.

If your brother's account was disabled, rather than yours, it may not be because you used one of his pictures.

Edges are just a little zaggity. Check your export settings, you may need to anti-alias.

but.....why?

It's the glasses. This has come up before. The design of the glasses themselves is trademarked. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a problem, since the photo isn't of or about the glasses, but the designer (I think it was Versace) sued Shutterstock once, so now they ban them.

Since, ultimately, we're here for the money, that's a top tier deal breaker.

One trick I've used for an image that I really liked, but was just a tad soft, is to posterize the color only. I don't know how it works in other programs, but in Corel, I make a duplicate layer, posterize it to a level that looks good (not too intense) and set the layer to color only. Then I adjust that layer's transparency to the best appearance (usually 50% is just right) This won't fix images that are clearly out of focus, but it will sharpen marginal photos.

Black and white often looks sharper than color. Reds and browns in particular bleed their luminance across edges. I have occasionally saved slightly soft focused images by reducing the saturation.