Is Outsourcing Photo Editing Worth It? — Zach Nichols Photography

Is Outsourcing Photo Editing Worth It? - Article by Zach Nichols

Outsourcing in this day and age is common place and necessary many times for a company’s growth. By definition, outsourcing is a re-delegation of work to an outside supplier or source including a third party company, individual, or AI software. Though outsourcing is a great way to manage a large workload, outsourcing in regard to editing can at times carry a certain stigma with it among wedding and portrait photographers. The most common thing photographers believe is that outsourcing is synonymous with loosing creative control. Is this true or is this just a misconception? In this article, I want to dive deeper into the topic of outsourcing and give my experience overall with outsourcing some of my own editing work along with what it is and is not.

Why would someone outsource photo editing?

If you ask a wedding photographer what they spend the most time doing day to day, their answer will almost always be editing. In fact, the average wedding photographer spends 10-14 hours editing per wedding, accounting for around 50% of their total time spent on one couple according to many sources. Weddings inherently have more time spent photographing and communicating with couples than do smaller shoots or other types of photography; so if you move away from the wedding photography space, you will see photographers spending upwards of 80% of their time on editing.

As many photographers progress in their career, they gain more and more clients; and along with that comes an increased editing load. It is not uncommon for more well-known photographers to shoot 40 weddings a year with countless small shoots sprinkled throuout. Load all these weddings and shoots into the “prime” photography season from May through October and you may begin to understand how overloaded photographers can become.

At some point in nearly every photographer’s career, they will be faced with an editing “bottleneck”. The point where smart photographers either have to cut back on the number of clients, or find a way to keep up with the increased work load. The photographers who do not pivot often times burn out, loose their passion, get severely and increasingly far behind on work (ever wait 6-12 months for your images to be returned?), or simply find another job. Those who do pivot often limit the number of shoots and weddings to a manageable number or turn to outsourcing of some kind.

How do you outsource editing?

Those photographers who decide to outsource their work can do so in a few different ways. One can hire out their editing to online companies, individual contractors (both foreign and in the US), or AI software.

Up until the introduction of AI software, online companies were the most used and best priced. Online companies offered quick turnaround times and were often great at general edits. Anything that was super stylistic was more difficult for them to mimic though.

Individual contractors were even better at matching a specific style; though finding a good one was very difficult and time-consuming. Some of the best individuals charged more for editing and so the costs associated with outsourcing was much higher than with a larger company. Their turnaround times varied heavily do to life events and work load.

The newest kid around the block is AI editing software. Up until this year I used to recommend against the use of AI because it was not refined enough for use; but then Imagen AI entered the picture and has since revolutionized the photography industry.. AI is much less expensive and accurate in it’s editing style than outsourcing to a person or business and it has put many of them out of business for that reason. What used to cost $0.25 per image now costs $0.05 through AI. Likewise the turnaround time on images of a couple weeks or more now takes minutes (yes, minutes). By far the best part of Imagen AI is just how accurate it is at learning and matching editing styles. It is truly incredible and revolutionary.

My personal Experience and professional opinion

Truth be told, I personally turned to outsourcing for my weddings in 2019. For many years, I refused to do so as I also believed that I would loose creative control and that my end product would suffer. I got extremely quick at editing (nearly 200 images per hour IF I was “in the zone” or 100 per hour when doing so more casually) and created presets and learned hotkeys to enhance my workflow; but even still, I became absolutely burnt out with editing. It was at that point that I decided to try out outsourcing to try and honestly save my own sanity and happiness. Four different companies and three individual contractors later and I finally settled with the company I liked best.

The company I chose cost me $0.25 per image and got my images returned to me quickly (usually within one to two weeks). Their edits did save me a good amount of time but still took a few hours of tweaking in a quality check to perfect the images once I received them back.

Then, mid-year this last wedding season (June 2023) one of my good friends told me about Imagen AI. He knew that I was not a fan of AI up to this point but assured me it was revolutionary and worth the try. So I decided to let the AI edit a couple weddings for me as a trial run. The AI took a look at the last two years of edits (30K+ images) to develop a feel for my style and create an “AI profile” for me. The AI does this to learn how you edit and will continue to do so as you refine the edits it sends to you. To my amazement, the images were edited identically to how I would edit them. I was able to do a quality check and make minor adjustments to the images the AI returned within 30 minutes per wedding and that was it.

Start to finish a wedding takes me an hour or less to cull, 10 minutes for the AI to make adjustments and edit for me, and about 20 minutes to do a quality check and make final adjustments. Talk about a game-changer. Not only does the AI save me a TON of time but it also saves me almost $5,000 in outsourcing costs yearly. If you’d like to give Imagen AI a try, click the following link to get 1500 free edits on Imagen AI. Or if you’d like to read my full review of the software, check out my article, Imagen AI Review - Is It Worth It?.

Key Takeaways - Is outsourcing photo editing worth it to you?

So, if you are reading this, I imagine you are interested in whether or not outsourcing is right for you. That is an answer I cannot give as each person must approach this for themselves; however, I would definitely encourage you to strongly consider it. As a photographer, you will always be limited by time since photography is a service-based industry and you only have so much time in the day to commit to your clients. Outsourcing is a step in the direction of opening up more time for you to focus on other things or taking on more clients. If you resonate with me that editing is monotonous and is what kills your creativity and passion; or if you are just burnt out beyond belief, I’d definitely recommend at least giving outsourcing a try. You really have nothing to loose.

The premise that a photographer looses control of their work by outsourcing I truly believe is based on a misunderstanding of what outsourcing is. Sure, some photographers may completely and negligently rely on their outsourcing when they send off the photos and never look at or touch the images again; but that is just negligence and is not what outsourcing should be. Most photographers who are successful aim to give their clients the best experience possible and will always give the final images a “quality check” before they send the photos of to their clients.

I hope this article proved useful to you. If you agree or disagree to any of what I have said, feel free to leave a comment below. I always appreciate your feedback and opinions. If you’d like to read more wedding-related articles, be sure to check out my articles on Imagen AI Review - Is It Worth It? and The Best Cameras For Wedding Photography In 2024.