High-quality product photos are essential if you want to sell online. While professional photography is a big part of getting them, image editing is also necessary to create attractive product images.

Suppose you want to surprise the market with neat commercial photography and showcase your merchandise in a flattering light. This process, however, takes time, knowledge, and patience.

Getting the perfect product image through image retouching can take somewhere between a few minutes to a few hours, depending on factors like the quality of the original image, the photoshopping experience of the person doing it, and so on.

Having this in mind, how do you know if you should keep photo editing in-house or outsource? What are the best cost and time-efficient options for your business? Read on to find out!

How do you know it’s time to outsource?

You can’t keep up.

If you’re doing photo editing yourself or in-house, a good hint you need to outsource is that you can’t keep up the pace with the workflow.

If most of your business-related deadlines are passed, and you have more and more products coming up, relying on a photo editing service might be the right choice for you.

You have a creative block.

When you’re feeling tired or burned out, your productivity and creativity will suffer.

If you outsource photo editing, you can free up time and focus on what’s more important for your business: generating new ideas and coming up with solutions.

You’re sick of doing repetitive tasks.

Going through the same image retouching process can be exhausting, especially if you’re dealing with large volumes of images.

If you feel a bit overwhelmed, but you don’t want to compromise on quality, you should hire a professional to do this work for you.

You don’t have the necessary experience.

Photoshopping isn’t for everyone. It is a very flexible and helpful software, but if it’s not part of your skillset, starting to learn while you’re trying to launch a new product collection or campaign could be close to impossible.

In addition, learning how to master the art of image retouching can take hours, days, weeks, or even months if you want perfect images. 

Your business is growing.

If you’re noticing a more significant turnover, more customers, that’s great! It seems like you’re doing a great job. But growth brings more things to worry about, from optimizing your website, offering a satisfying client experience, and so on.

For example, if you want to focus on growing your business even further, you won’t have the time to do the image editing for your commercial photography. 

Why outsourcing your image editing is a good idea.

One of the benefits of outsourcing image editing for product images is having access to expert-level skills.

Companies that offer photo editing services have experience, which leads to better photos, ultimately better ROI, and faster.

Furthermore, outsourcing is excellent because it frees up time and resources, which you can use to develop your business even further.

But trust me that you’d be sleeping better if you knew that a pro is taking care of your commercial images.

The only possible downside of outsourcing image editing is the lack of control. However, when it comes to creativity, things can get relative.

That’s why it’s essential to communicate exactly what outcome you’re looking for, which are your expectations, retouching guidelines, and deadlines.

Are you interested in hiring an expert in image editing? We offer fast and professional photo editing for your business, no matter your industry.

Our 15 years of experience guarantee that your images will turn out perfectly. 

Want to set up a meeting? Drop us a line here.