Outsource Photo edits or do in house?

Photo editing is necessary in ecommerce business in current times where product images make the decision to sell. According to Etsy 88% of customers choose the buying decision by seeing the product.

Although you have a high-end product, it’s really tough to turn a traffic to a real buyer. In that case photo editing is must and this technique will create a value to product and an attachment to a product as well. It’s not a wise idea to just upload a raw image to your e-commerce website. Before uploading you must touch up in several areas of a product to bring customer attraction.

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Let’s say you have a bulk amount of product which you want to launch and you have snapped all the photos. It’s really time consuming to finish a photography session and if you sit for editing those images then your most valuable time will be spent before launching a product to your e-commerce website. In that case you can outsource your snapshots to any outsourcing companies like Riseup Labs to save your valuable time and in that mean time you can spend your time in other parts of your business as you will be busy in launching products. So outsourcing your images to get edited will be a great idea to save your money and time.

So that’s why you should choose outsourcing your images rather than doing in-house.

Outsourcing and In-house set up, both have advantages and disadvantages. Let’s discuss on this as you must have a clear idea doing In-house or outsourcing.

In this article, you’ll get:

1. In-house photo editing vs outsourcing
2. Advantages and Disadvantages with in-house photo editing
3. Advantages and Disadvantages with outsourcing
4. How you can decide in between In-house vs outsourcing
5. What kind of editing should consider doing in in-house or through outsourcing?

In-house photo editing vs outsourcing

Let’s iron out what each strategy means before digging into the nitty gritty of outsourcing vs. in-house.

In-house photo editing means that the pictures will be processed by the photographer or company that created the photos.

Let’s assume that you’re an e-commerce merchant shooting images of your own stuff. If you opt for in-house photo editing, tasks such as image retouching, masking, clipping, etc. can also be done by you and your staff.

On the opposite hand, outsourcing is while the photographer or agency can pay a 3rd celebration to address their image editing. The pics are dispatched out to a contractor or agency, who will then edit the photos earlier than sending them to lower back to the photographer or agency.

Advantages and Disadvantages with in-house photo editing   

Advantages: 

                 i. Controlling:

The largest cause photographers and different organizations favor editing photographs themselves is that they get complete manage over the appearance and sense of the images. If you’ve got very precise branding wishes or have a sure imaginative and prescient for the way you need the photo to return back out, you’ll gain more from doing photo edits in-house.               

                               ii. Cost savings

Outsourcing your image-enhancing needs comes with positive costs. If you have a small product catalog and also your handiest want to edit a dozen or fewer photos, then it makes the experience to simply do it yourself. However, if you’re managing loads or more photos, then enhancing them in-residence will take in it slow and save you from devoting your energy to different areas of your business.

Disadvantages:   

                                i. Kills your valuable time

It’s one element to edit an image or two, however, what in case you needed to crop, retouch, resize, and smooth up the background of hundreds of images? Good image editing incurs time, so the DIY path can restrict the assets and strength that you can be set into other regions of your business which include taking up extra tasks or locating new clients.

So ultimately you are losing your strength and time. During this time, you can look for other clients or start new project. According to the opportunity cost, you are losing money by giving the extra time on editing.

3.  Advantages and Disadvantages with outsourcing

Advantages:

Excellent editing:

When you send your images to any vendor then try to do their best and they can because they are specialized in this service and they have mass team who can edit thousands of images per day. They have quality checker who checks the ultimate quality after editing the images which makes the images flawless. All you need just give them proper guideline and they can give you the feel of In-house. There should be a good collaboration between you and the vendor company.

Quick timeline:

As you are photographer so you may have rush in delivering images to your client and make your customer happy so you will have to give the proper expected turnaround so that you can get your images back keep alive in the competition. Only a quality vendor can give you the quick setup as they have good number of people working for them.

Make you more relax:

Although we have explained this fact before but it’s necessary to repeat that again. Whenever you forward the image editing task to the vendor then you can do relax or give your precious time to deal with more clients and go for another project. This way you can generate more money. Once the images are done by the vendors then they will come up to you and deliver you all the images. While processing the images you can employ yourself with effective side of your business and this way you can be more dynamic in your photography or e-commerce field.

Disadvantages:

Limited Control over work:

There are few companies who wants creative freedom and want photos handled in a very specific way. In that case they feel bit risky to make the job done other vendors. They love uniqueness and they have their own way to edit their images which may sometimes doesn’t offer by the other vendors or the way they edit the images is not up to the mark. Those companies always like to have In-house production house to generate their own edited images rather than outsourcing. It’s their own choice. 

Upfront cost

Things like you have limited images in a month and your in-house designers are enough to edit those images and you are paying them at a certain date of the month. If you outsource your images you must carry the upfront cost to place the image editing order. So, business to business it varies. Depending on your post production editing you can go either for In-house or outsource. 

4. How you can decide in between In-house vs outsourcing

Basically, there is no any exact conclusion regarding this both terms. It actually depends on your business. According to the need and quantity of the images any of this term arises. Depending on the business size and the intension of the company owner they usually take the decision. As an example, there are so many photographers they are super busy in capturing images, getting meet with approaching clients, several photo shoots and so many tasks. It really tedious and time consuming for them to sit al day to edit hundreds of images and in that case, they really like to outsource their images to any pro-outsourcing company like Riseup Labs. On the other hand, few people may have very few images to edit and less post production job. Also, they don’t want to do back and forth with other vendors to edit their images as they have complete in-house set up. These group of people can avoid looking for other vendors to edit their images.

Mentioning few points, we would like to clear the things more below:

Image Quantity:

Image Quantity is the major fact here. If you have around 5000 images in a month then it would be really tough for you to handle all the images doing In-house. In that case if you hire an outsourcing company then you can be more relax. Just set a turnaround time with them and be relax. As soon as images are ready for you to download the outsourcing team will give heads up to you. So, things will be much easier if you hire an outsourcing company

When is your deadline?

Deadline is the major fact here to choose whether you are going to your In-house set up or an outsourcing company. As example you have 7 days in a hand and you have around 1000 images to edit and your in-house team is only capable to edit few of those as they have other parts to do as well. So, in that case outsourcing your images is a better option rather than doing in in-house. 

What’s your budget?

After getting the quotation from your supplier you can set your budget and pass all the images to them. There is also an opportunity to get higher discount if you have bulk images. So, here is the good part that you are having discount according to your budget and also getting back the edited images without having any pressure. So outsourcing your images to get edited is always a better option to make your clients happy and be more cost efficient.

What types of edits do you need?

Also, the type of editing matters here. If you need straight Background removal service then it may be manageable by you. But if you have multiple services to do then it’s a matter of concern. Doing all the business staffs it will be really painful and waste of time to edit such a bulk quantity with various services. Multiple service needs can only be manageable by your outsourcing Image Editing partner.

Photo edits to outsource

Background removal: Background removal service is always safe to forward to your outsourcing partner as they will be highly skilled in cut out photos through Pen Tool and put your product any of your desired background.

Clipping Path: Using pen tool in Adobe Photoshop you outsource designers can cut out your product perfectly and they are really aware of every edges of your product. They have quality assurance team who checked the ultimate quality and make the images up to the mark.

Resizing: If you have a website and you need to upload your all the images in certain format. It’s really time-consuming job to resize thousand of images in a day. In that case your outsourcing team can resize any of your quantities in a day as they will have a team and they will divide all the works among them. End of the day they are capable to meet your turnaround.

Photo Retouching: There are several images you may have which are not ready yet show up on your website but you need sales and you don’t have time to re-captured those. So, the products you have with dust and spots or any other imperfections can be easily edited by your outsourcing team.

Image Masking: If you have around 500+ images with fur which have been snapped by your photographer but you want them in white background in that case it would be really hard for you to edit those images. Your outsourcing partner can edit your all the hairy and fury areas of your images in no time. Their fastest skills will impress you and your products will look attractive which will be effective for you to generate sales.

Drop Shadow: In a same way you have all the images edited by yourself and now you are afraid that your images are not looking realistic. Your images editing partner can do a best job here. They can put realistic shadow at your desired side of the product and right then your product will look agile.

So, at the end of this discussion, we can state that outsourcing your images is a best option to get edited if you have bulk images in your hand. Save your time, be cost-effective & grow your business.