Why Outsource Product Image Editing? (6 Reasons)

Regardless of how fantastic your camera might be or how spot-on your photo shoot setup is, neglecting to edit your product photos is not an option.

There are two clear options available to any e-commerce business. Perform the image editing in-house or outsource the work to another company.

In the past, product image editing and retouching has commonly been done by a retailer’s own staff in-house or alternatively by the photo studio originally hired to photograph your product images.

The crazy thing is that the majority of photo studios and photographers are already outsourcing image editing work. After all, a photographer’s specialty is taking the initial shots, not sitting at a computer desk all day editing images.

Photographers for a while now have realized that the outsourcing of image editing is a no-brainer.

If you take the necessary care in the selection of an outsourcing partner, then it will inevitably save you money, dramatically improve the quality of your product shots and get your images onto your website much quicker.

Let’s take a closer look at why you should outsource product photo editing services.

1) It Can Be Difficult To Find Staff For Repetitive & Boring Tasks

2) eCommerce Sites (Especially Fashion) Can Be Highly Seasonal

3) Image Delivery Times Can Cause Delays & Lower Sales

4) Consistency

5) Product Photography Retouching Services Have The Experience & Skills

6) You Can Pack Numerous Tasks into A Limited Time Frame

1) It Can Be Difficult To Find Staff For Repetitive & Boring Tasks

After all who wants to spend their days doing such tasks? The results may be rewarding for the company, but not so much for the individual performing the tasks over and over.

Once an editor has a grasp on the creative side of product photo retouching, then the actual process does become somewhat of a grind.

Some parts of retouching can be quite challenging and even be stimulating for a talented image editor. The majority of photo editing is relatively mundane, no real skill levels required and highly time draining.

If you feel that photo editing can be done within your business, then you must consider that your editors need to be multi-skilled and able to perform all retouching tasks. A range of skills must include simple background Removals and clipping paths all the way up to comprehensive retouching. For this range of skills you also need to pay higher wages, it can also mean that the majority of their work is simple clipping – which will result in them becoming bored doing the same work all day.
Add to all of these things the associated costs of recruitment and training due to employee turnover. You need to keep a fine balance of the correct number of Staff to avoid any post-production slowdowns or bottlenecks.

In fact, if you experience any significant spikes in the number of images that you need for your site then inevitably you will need to outsource the work anyway.

2) eCommerce Sites (Especially Fashion) Can Be Highly Seasonal

For fashion retailers, in particular, there can be huge variations In the number of images needed for a website. As we all know, fashion trends and seasons change from month to month resulting in a constantly changing demand for product images.

Employing the correct number editors in House to cover all the images required is almost an impossibility. There is no middle ground, usually they are idle or overworked. Inevitably this is where outsourcing is first experienced by a company that is stretched with too much work to do.

If you start with outsourcing to begin with then you never have to worry about these trend and season spikes. A professional retouching service will be able to scale with you and cater for any spikes or troughs in your Image volumes.

The posting of your images to your website should not be interrupted I any delays regardless if you have 10, 100 or 10000 images to edit.

If you do experience any downtime or quiet periods, then you are not paying for staff to sit around.

3) Image Delivery Times Can Cause Delays & Lower Sales

If you are a business with a high turnover rate of images, image volume fluctuations are guaranteed to create a bottleneck. Bottlenecks can dramatically affect a business’s profits. Delays of weeks or even days, between when a photoshoot takes place and the images of finally uploaded to the website can have significant effects on sales and also leave a business behind its competitors.

Bottlenecks are immediately eliminated if your image editing is outsourced. A professional image editing service will provide a turnaround of 1 day or less, regardless of the day of the week or time of the year. Pixel By Hand as standard provides an overnight service, whereby if you upload before 6 p.m. They will be back by 10 a.m. the next morning.

In fact, this is faster than most do-it-yourself teams good finish their image editing! Regardless of the number of photo editors you have employed. Our teams work in 3 shifts so they are operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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4) Consistency

.What happens if you have a regular turnover in staff for your Image editing? Consistency is affected. It’s very difficult to build a consistent brand through your images if they are not consistently produced in the same way.

Even the slightest changes in your Image quality, look or feel can be a disadvantage to your site’s brand.  By outsourcing your work you will maintain consistency across all of your images.

5) Product Photography Retouching Services Have The Necessary Experience & Skills

Retouching product photography is different to most other tasks in that you need to use artistic flair. It is not like cutting out a background or resizing an image. It is essential that the person working on an image to be retouched has the necessary skill, experience and talent. This is something that can take years to master.

6) You Can Pack Numerous Tasks into A Limited Time Frame

Clipping, resizing, cropping, retouching.. These are just some of the tasks you need to fit into a limited time frame when you ended your images. If you do not have the necessary organisation and structures in place then it can become a bit overwhelming.

Our teams work on a virtual production line where each specialist image editor is focused on a particular task. Increasing efficiency, distance and speed.

At Pixel By Hand, we prefer to take a more personal approach to image editing. Each and every business we work with will have an allocated point of contact. If you have any questions, problems or special requests then we are available to help.

About Pixelbyhand

We are a professional product photo editing service. We work with businesses across the globe perfecting their images for eCommerce websites.

If you run an online business and would like to improve on your current product images then complete the simple form below. (We will only use your email to contact you directly regarding any inquiry you make. We promise to never send you spam or any unwanted mail).