Around 75% of people depend on product photos when buying online. But raw pictures from the camera aren’t enough to win over the customers. Proper editing is necessary to make the product images more appealing.

However, image editing requires a long time, and adjusting to your busy schedule takes a lot of work. Outsourcing the photo editing is the only way to save you from this hassle.

But how to outsource photo editing for your eCommerce business? What things to consider when choosing authentic retouching services? Is it safe to send the product images to external services?

We know many questions come to your mind. Here, you’ll get the answers to all of your queries. So, without further ado, let’s get started!

What is Outsourced Photo Editing?

Outsourced photo editing is a business practice of hiring a third-party or external service to edit and return your photos. This service is particularly beneficial for professional photographers, eCommerce business owners, social media influencers, and individuals who lack the time for image editing. It’s a time-saving solution that allows you to focus on other aspects of your work while ensuring your photos are professionally edited.

For example, you have an online jewelry store. To attract customers, showcasing the best product photos with the gem’s unique cut, style, or stone color is important. No matter how professional the photographer you hire or how wonderful the photoshoot is, the image requires retouching.

Now that you know about photo editing outsourcing, let’s check out why you need to outsource product photo retouching services instead of doing it alone.

Why Do You Outsource Product Photo Editing?

Companies and eCommerce business owners outsource product photo editing to save costs and time. Other reasons are flexibility and agility, which convert startups into successful brands.

As per Statista, the average number of products (4.95) bought through online orders. But what’s the reason behind product return? When buyers don’t get the same product shown online. Businesses that outsource image editing get amazing and pixel-perfect in-house retouching.

For example, fashion brands or social media savvy businesses like Everlane or Glossier rely on social media platforms to showcase their product line and build brand identity. High-quality and aesthetic product visuals guide other fashion brands and photographers on how to shoot and retouch their products.

From contrast to lighting transitions, background colors, shadows, or angles, everything shares a story, demonstrates its lifestyle, and gives users confidence in the products they use.

An effective product photography style guide includes several key things, including:

• Contrast, color saturation, or clarity.
• How to arrange products with live models or using ghost mannequins.
• Details around lighting or how to represent realistic shadows and reflections.
• Perfect product angles.
• Fix imperfections like exposure levels or color balance.
• Fulfill every online platform’s photo requirements.
• Eliminate distractions and give a professional and outstanding look.
• Highlight and bring attention to the product’s details and unique features for close-up shots.
• Maintain consistency and aesthetic of your product photos.

The Benefits of Outsourcing Photo Editing Services

Last-minute product launch? Trade exhibitions or fairs is one the way? A sudden work pressure from a client? Whatever difficulties you face, the professional and pro-Photoshop experts team meet them flawlessly.

Here are the benefits of outsourcing photo editing services.

• Efficiency and quality: Outsourcing gives access to professional Photoshop editors who have the latest market trends, techniques, and working experience. This guarantees businesses and individuals will get top-notch and pixel-perfect images that meet their product or service expectations.
• Different editing services: By outsourcing, you get various photo editing services in one place, i.e., retouching, color correction, image masking, etc. This means you can choose and meet specific client requirements.
• Increase productivity: You don’t need to handle the entire team. The internal team streamlines their workflow and improves productivity by delivering on time, allowing you to focus on business growth.
• Time savings: Want to edit bulk images within a shorter time? Outsourcing ensures that businesses or individuals get edited images on time without compromising the quality.
• Cost-effective: You don’t need to hire an in-house designer team or invest in Photoshop software. The outsourcing agency already has Photoshop experts and advanced software and equipment to offer high-quality services.
• Generate more revenues: Online buyers rely on product images while buying from digital shops. Outsourcing image editing services makes those product images visually appealing and realistic online, boosting sales and reinvesting more.
• Creative ideas: Every image has its unique storyline. Outsourcing images from photo editing companies helps you generate creative ideas for promoting your business on local and global platforms.

However, collaborating with a prominent photo editing agency adds profits. But the question is: Do all Photoshop editing companies serve quality work? And how do you find reliable ones for an online business? Let’s dig into the next section to find out the answers!

How Do You Outsource Photoshop Editing for Ecommerce?

Now that you’ve realized photo editing outsourcing is the best option to enhance business sales and boost growth, let’s walk through how to outsource photo edits for eCommerce businesses.

1. Know What Level of Editing You Need

Before looking for image retouching services, determine the image editing level you need for your business or product niches. For example:

• Clipping path: Isolate and cut our products from the background so that you can use them on social media, Amazon white background, or websites.
• Image masking: Cut out complex items with undefined edges like fur or hair.
• Shadows: Want to add a creative touch to your product images? Shadow creation gives your photos dimension and adds a realistic vibe.
• Ghost mannequin: The most common editing in Photoshop is to edit a mannequin to give a store-like shopping experience to consumers.
• Color variants: It helps to change the color of a single product.
• Amazon product infographic: Want to highlight your product’s unique features? With this editing, you can convert your plain images into captivating and informative ones.

Along with those, there are raster to vector image editing services, retouching services, and more.

2. Find The Best On Google

Google is the best partner to find the best and most reliable photo editing service providers. For this, search on Google for “Outsource photo editing service” After that, you’ll discover many options and pick the one that suits your product criteria or aligns with your budget. Also, you can check out trusted review platforms like Trustpilot, Yelp, G2, or others.

3. Browse Social Media Platforms Worldwide

You can leverage social media platforms like Facebook, Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, or others that most businesses follow. Build connections with editing agencies and stay updated to explore their expertise level. Participate in groups related to eCommerce and digital marketing.

Also, many agencies share their client projects and portfolios on Instagram. Check out their posts to create a sense of their style and quality of work.

4. Find Local Business Directories & Listing Sites

Local business directories like “Google My Business,” “Yelp,” and others help find local image editing services. For searching, you can use terms like “Photo editing services” or “eCommerce photo retouching” near me. 

You can also check out industry-specific directories like Clutch.co or others to find the best service providers. However, business directories and listing sites ensure that the business is trustworthy and has a physical address.

5. Ask Your Network for Trusted Recommendations

Reach out to your connections on LinkedIn, Facebook, or others. You can post a request for the best photo editing service recommendations from reliable sources. Also, you can join eCommerce and photography forums or groups where members often share experiences and recommendations. 

Meanwhile, you can ask your business partners or eCommerce entrepreneurs for referrals. By doing so, you get detailed information about their recommended agencies’ skills, work expertise fields, and so on.

6. Ask Which Software They Use

It’s not always important to know their skills, but to ensure they are technologically sound to deliver quantity. For this, you can ask the company about the technology and tools they use in Photoshop to create the highest-quality images. 

In the end, you shouldn’t pay for services that use AI-generated or free photo editing tools to edit your product photos. You only need expert photo editors who provide professional and natural product visuals.

7. Analyze Their Portfolio and Ratings

For example, jewelry, cosmetics, and clothing require editing techniques different from electronic items. So, when choosing a photo editing service company, ensure they have experience in your industry. You can request sample edits based on specific requirements and review their portfolios. 

By doing so, you can get an idea about their attention to detail, type of editing, professionalism, and consistency in quality. It will add benefits if they have expertise in working with popular marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.

8. Create & Share a Photo Editing Guideline

Regarding Photoshop editing product photos, no matter how efficient their editing services are, they also need clients’ guidelines. Some renowned image editing agencies offer Free Trials. You can use this opportunity to share your editing requirements for the best service.

Your guide must include size requirements, file format, and editing types. Doing so can also acknowledge their work quality and turnaround time, which helps you meet your urgent deliveries. 

9. Compare The Best Prices

After shortlisting some photo editing outsourcing companies, compare their service quality with prices. Also, you can contact other service providers to know the range of quotes for your project. Ensure each quote you provide has the same scope of work. 

Some may charge per image per hour, or others may offer bulk pricing or subscription models. So, it’s up to you which pricing models align with your budget and workload. When deciding, consider the quality of work, reliability, fast turnaround time, and customer service.

Looking into these things can get you professional and reliable product image editing outsourcing services. Next, you must consider when you should outsource the photo editing.

5 Signs You Need to Outsource Photo Editing

Do you plan to boost organic traffic to your business pages with 360-degree product photography and high-quality photos? Or, plan to launch the most hyped products in the market with an e-commerce infographic (product descriptions and other details)?

If so, outsourcing photo editing services will be a win-win solution for your business. If so, let’s look at some key factors below that give you the confidence to hire the best photo editing agency.

1. Difficulties in Balancing Work and Life 

We can understand it’s hard to maintain a work-life balance. While managing everything, you feel exhausted with the workload and urgent customer requests. 

Besides the post-production and photo editing, you couldn’t keep up with the new product launches or emergency deliveries. Outsourcing photo editing services can save you time and help you manage your workload better.

2. During Fast Business Growth 

Are you an e-commerce business owner or plan to launch a new fashion product line? Successful business marketing and sales strategies lie in story-telling visuals. As per Deloitte, many companies found outsourcing adds profits and gives a competitive edge.

Also, 19% of small businesses admit their ultimate goal for outsourcing is to grow the business. Outsourcing gives you flexibility and allows you to focus on more revenue-generated projects.

3. Out of Creative Ideas

Feeling burned out or unmotivated for extra working hours or workload? Then outsourcing will be the best solution for your industry. Also, you can utilize that time to work on other projects that inspire you or take a rest.  

McKinsey & Company reports that half of workers feel burned out and industry experts believe burned-out people have already quit. Outsourcing improves customer experience and gives customers an engaging journey to differentiate your products from others. 

4. Repetitive Editing Patterns

There are different types of photo editing, like drop shadow, background removal, and others, that require concentration and time. Thinking about how much it takes to edit product photos?

Quora states that it might take a minute to an hour on average. However, the time frame may fluctuate due to image editing complexity. Now, it’s time to make a decision: will you be able to edit photos, shoot products, or work on a new client project? Photo editing outsourcing will work as a lifesaver for you.

5. Lack of Confidence in Photo Editing 

Most professional photographers have skills in Photoshop, but not everyone excels in it. Adobe Photoshop is a powerful tool, but transforming rich and unique product photos takes hours upon hours of practice. 

So, will you spend your valuable time learning Photoshop or impactful business tasks? Emily Weiss founder of Glossier.Com, the most authentic and most hyped beauty product. She and her co-founder launched 32 Shades, a skin-first foundation, and concealer made for real life. Rather than focusing on photo editing, they invest in outsourcing to a skilled editor.

There are so many reasons to outsource photo editing services. It will be any photography niche like fashion photography, real estate photo editing outsourcing, e-commerce product photo editing, etc. Do you want to outsource the editing service but are worried about the pricing structure? 

Check out the next section now!

How Much Does it Cost to E-Commerce Product Photo Editing?

Outsourcing means optimizing work and adding new specialties or lines of revenue. The cost of e-commerce product photo editing depends on several factors, such as:

• Complexity of editing: There are three different complexity levels, i.e., simple, medium, and complex, or specialized editing. The editing costs depend on the editing complexity.  
• Turnaround time: Higher quality editing and faster turnaround time will come at premium prices. Also, you might need to pay additional fees when you have urgent editing requirements.
• Editing techniques: Pixel-perfect and high-resolution editing often come at premium prices. 
• Image quantity: How many images do you need to edit? The number of edited images impacts costs. However, some photo editing agencies offer discounted rates for bulk editing and individual image editing.
• Specialized editing services: Do you need 360-degree product images, image manipulation, or advanced retouching? All these special editing services might charge separate pricing. 

Also, outsourcing photo editing services depends on agencies’ pricing structures. For example, the Offshore Clipping pricing structure is divided into:

a) Services 

• Clipping path
• Multi clipping path
• Background removal
• Shadow masking
• Image masking
• Photo retouching
• Ghost mannequin
• Color correction
• Amazon product infographic (need to send quote)
• 360-degree product photo (need to send quote)

b) Turnaround time

c) Complexity, and 

d) Quantity

As the most renowned and best photo editing outsourcing agency, they also offer a Free Trial and Free Quote to experience their photo editing expertise.

However, regarding real estate photo editing outsourcing or eCommerce product photo editing services, your main focus is high-quality images to attract more audiences and build loyalty.

FAQs about Editing Product Photos in Photoshop

Here are some more FAQs about photo editing outsourcing:

Conclusion

Finally, you have a complete idea about how to outsource photo editing for your e-commerce business. As product photos are the heart of your online business, you must outsource photo editing carefully.