If you’re going to outsource image editing, it means after the photoshoot, you will send your images to an external retouching service who will edit the images and then return them. A professional outsourcing service will align with your style guide so they can consistently edit your images and match your aesthetic.
“Editing” can cover a wide variety of actions. Basic photo editing includes removing the background, creating clipping paths, aligning products consistently within the image canvas, setting consistent margins, cropping, compressing images, setting aspect ratios along with image width and height, and converting to file types like jpeg and png.
More advanced outsourced image editing services will also provide retouching. The line between photo retouching and photo editing is heavily blurred, and some people use the terms interchangeably, but generally speaking in retouching the product itself is being manipulated within the image. For example, e-commerce images can benefit from wrinkle and crease reduction, model skin retouching, adjusting shadows, and product cleanup (like pin, scuff, dirt, and lint removal). For more specifics, you may want to refer to this product image retouching glossary.
Why outsource photo editing for e-commerce?
All product images, almost without exception, will be edited. The choice most growing brands, retailers, and photo studios face is whether to outsource photo editing or do it in-house.
Photo editing has traditionally been done in-house by brands and retailers or by the photo studio hired to shoot e-commerce images. What some brands and retailers that hire commercial photo studios don’t realize is that most studios are already taking advantage of outsourced photo editing for photographers. The reason is simple: outsourcing works. When done properly, with a careful review and selection process, outsourcing will not only save you money on image editing, it will also improve your image quality and get product images online faster.
Editing images in-house presents several challenges that have long frustrated studio operators.
1. Product photography is highly seasonal, so you always have too many or too few retouchers
Because apparel photography in particular is seasonal and often catalog-oriented, there are huge variances in photo production month to month and week to week. That makes staffing the right number of in-house retouchers a mostly impossible challenge: they’re generally either idle or overworked. Most companies have to hire additional freelance retouchers during busy times.
If you partner with outsource photo editing companies, you don’t have to worry about seasonal swings. An outsource photo retouching service should enable you to scale: your process shouldn’t change whether you have 100, 1000, or 10,000 photos to edit per day. Additionally, when pricing is aligned with your image volume, you’re only paying for photo editing when you actually need it.
2. Repetitive photo editing tasks can lead to employee turnover
Retouching, like many creative jobs, is a blend of artistry and precision. Some edits like detailed skin retouching or reconstructing parts of a product hidden by props are challenging and creatively rewarding for a skilled retoucher. But much of image editing is low-skilled and repetitive. Tasks like creating clipping paths or removing backgrounds don’t require years of experience and with the rise of AI, they’ve become more accessible than ever. That shift isn’t a bad thing; it just changes where human expertise is most valuable.
If you’re doing photo editing in-house, because you will likely only have a few retouchers, they all need to be capable of doing every single retouching task. More advanced skills mean higher salaries, and it also means they’ll get bored clipping images all day. That leads to employee turnover and the associated expensive hiring and onboarding processes, along with difficulty in keeping your post-production team staffed enough to avoid bottlenecks.
3. Bottlenecks delay e-commerce sales
When the number of retouchers you need fluctuates constantly and you have high turnover, the time it takes to edit photos is going to be a bottleneck. A delay of weeks or even months between a photoshoot and uploading edited photos to your website has a significant cost in lost sales and relevance.
If you outsource photo editing, you can eliminate bottlenecks. An established, reputable outsourced photo editing service should, at a minimum, deliver images in 24 hours or less. At Pixelz, a “next morning” turnaround time is common (upload before 6:00 p.m. your time and they’re back by 10:00 a.m. next business day), with 3 hours or less available with an enterprise account.
That’s faster than an in-house team could complete image editing, no matter how many photo editors you have on staff. The nature of time-shifting BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), with photo editors located around the world and editing images around the clock, means that if you outsource photo editing work on your images, it won’t stop until they’re done.
Outsourced photo editing order insights keep Pixelz accountable for on-time delivery
How to outsource photo editing for e-commerce?
The single worst way to select an outsourced image editing service is to simply take the lowest quoted per-image price. Quite apart from the high probability that low outlier bids are promising something they won’t deliver, you’re ignoring the Total Cost of Operation (TCO).
BPO success, including outsourcing photo editing, should be determined by its total cost to you. That cost is measured in more than cents per image: it’s management, turnaround time, workflow efficiency, reputation, and image quality.
In other words, paying 10¢ an image doesn’t mean much if the results are poor, the delivery is a week late, and you’re stuck in endless email threads trying to fix it. When you factor in all the time spent managing rework and communication, those “savings” disappear pretty quickly.
If you’re planning to outsource photo editing, you should ask the following questions of any potential outsourced photo editing service.
Questions you should ask any outsourced photo editing service:
- What’s your onboarding process?
- How do I communicate my style guide?
- How do I learn to use your system?
- Do you have a technology based system?
- What is the online interface like?
- How do I give photo editing instructions?
- What ensures consistency?
- How do I rush orders?
- Are there quality assurance tools for proofing edited images?
- Can you scale with my needs?
- Who are you already working with?
- Are you an e-commerce specialist?
- Who has endorsed you?
- How do you treat your employees?
- What’s your Corporate Social Responsibility policy?
- Can I visit?
- Who is actually editing my images?
- What is your worker retention rate?
- Where are your former workers?
Let’s tackle these one at a time.
1. What’s your onboarding process?
An outsourced image editing service should have a defined step-by-step process for new customers. The editing company needs to learn your requirements, and you need to learn how photo editing is done so you can understand how best to use the system.
Onboarding can look different depending on your needs and the complexity of your edits. For some, it’s as simple as an online tutorial or responsive customer support, especially if your workflows are straightforward and the service has a clear system in place. For others, it’s a deeper process involving calls, meetings, or even on-site visits to align on style guides and creative standards.
What matters most is mutual understanding before you upload 10,000 images. If there’s no onboarding process at all, chances are your partnership will get off to a rocky start.
2. Do you have a technology-based system?
A lot of outsourced photo editing still operates the old-fashioned way — a group of editors sharing a folder, pulling images, and working through them without clear prioritization or skill matching. The result? Inconsistent quality, limited visibility, and slow response times.
To make matters worse, creative requirements are often passed around through PDFs, Word docs, or long email threads, sometimes even relayed verbally. That kind of process leaves plenty of room for error and no easy way to track progress, leave feedback on individual images, or adjust edits in real time.
The real frustration usually shows up at the QA stage, when finished images have to be reviewed one by one in Photoshop, and every rejection needs to be logged manually before the process starts all over again. It’s tedious, time-consuming, and anything but scalable.
That’s where technology makes all the difference. You need a system that’s intuitive, efficient, and built to handle high-volume post-production without the chaos. Outsourcing should simplify your workflow, not slow it down.
Meet S.A.W.™ (Specialist Assisted Workflows) — the Pixelz technology that rethinks how post-production gets done. Instead of one person handling every step, each image moves through a digital assembly line of specialist editors and automated processes, all coordinated by AI.
With complete visibility into every image and deadline, you can track progress, prioritize orders, or hit expedite without disrupting the flow. Detailed specs are set up directly in the platform, so you stay in control, no endless back-and-forth or unclear feedback loops. Upload, assign, and go.
A look at Pixelz, Mark-up Review features!
Online commenting and quality assurance tools allow you to communicate photo editing needs quickly and visually, in the moment. Apply comments on a per-image or per-order level, or create a new spec to have it available for future orders. Rejections are clearly marked and tracked to your order, and bumped to the front of the queue. A technology-based outsource photo editing service can scale, because systems aren’t stressed by volume. Organization, simplification, and automation create efficiency.
3. Who are you already working with?
First things first: make sure any outsourced post-production partner actually gets your kind of work. Editing fashion editorials, campaign videos, and e-commerce imagery all require totally different skill sets. At Pixelz, we live in that mix from polished product photos to high-impact editorial and video content, so we know how to adapt our approach for every creative need. A one-size-fits-all service just can’t cut it. The way you retouch a beauty campaign isn’t the same as how you color-grade a lookbook or prep a product reel.
Second, take a look at the outsourced photo editing service’s customer list. If they don’t have a published one, why not? A reputable, established company will have endorsements, case studies, and reviews.
Do you respect the photography of the brands, retailers, and photo studios they work with? An outsourced photo editing service that’s already working with leaders will have passed through more rigorous review and stress than a newer company. They’re also more likely to stick around; you want a long-term relationship, so you don’t have to repeat the outsourcing selection and onboarding processes again in a few months.
4. How do you treat your employees?
There’s no shortage of outsourcing horror stories — yet somehow, the same mistakes keep happening. Too many companies chase the lowest possible price, overlooking total cost of ownership and the human impact behind it. The reality is, not all outsourcing is created equal.
Photo editing might seem far removed from the risks of factory work, but ethical concerns still exist. Behind every low-cost offer could be vulnerable workers, poor conditions, or unsustainable practices and that can damage more than just your conscience. It can damage your brand. Put in the research to ensure you select an ethical outsourced image processing service and mitigate the risk to both workers and your reputation. Apart from the obvious ethical and legal concerns, simple logic should tell you that happier workers produce higher quality work.
If you really want to know how a company is operating, it’s not hard to find out. Review their CSR policy. Ask questions: Who am I actually working with? What is your worker retention rate? Where are your former workers?
There’s tremendous churn in many BPO companies because they’re not thinking long-term and they have unhappy, underpaid workers stuck in a dead-end job. A company that cares about impact realizes that outsourcing is just like any other field: the most talented workers find the best jobs, and are motivated by acquiring new skills and advancing their careers.
For example, an intelligent outsourced photo editing service will skew towards youth acquiring digital and soft skills through courses offered by the company, like leadership, English, and business management. You should see high retention rates, with workers remaining at the company for several years as they progress. The outsourcer will promote from within, with clear paths for advancement, and have locals in trusted leadership roles. They will take pride in workers who do move on to key positions at other companies.
Outsourcing photo editing is beneficial to your studio's bottom line, improving lead times and freeing your studio creatives to focus on branding, styling, and getting products live on your online shop.
Compare outsourcing photo editing services by reviewing their existing customers, CSR policies, delivery times, and rejection rates. If they do not provide this information, remain skeptical.
Ask how long it would take them to handle a large one-time order — say, 3,000 images. If the answer is a week, that’s a red flag. It usually means they don’t have the scalability or systems in place to manage high-volume work efficiently.
Outsourcing post-production should feel effortless, intuitive, and scalable. The best partners aren’t just editing — they’re innovating. Find out if the company is leveraging AI-powered workflows, experimenting with Digital Twins, or developing their own tools and automation models to speed up delivery and improve consistency. At Pixelz, we’ve been using AI for over a decade to enhance quality control, streamline workflows, and push what’s possible in post-production. If a service is still relying on outdated methods like Dropbox uploads and long email threads for feedback, it’s probably not built for where the industry is headed or your brand.
Lastly, consider outsourcing photo editing with Pixelz. We've spent over 10 years partnering with e-commerce studios to evolve the outsourced photo retouching industry.