“A picture is worth a thousand words”. This maxim holds special significance in today’s e-commerce era.
When you come across a brick and mortar store while walking around, you decide to enter it because you like what you see from outside.
Similarly in case of e-commerce portals, it is the images that catch the browser’s attention. If they like the image, they would probably be curious to know more and therefore visit your portal. If they are convinced with what they see, they might just go ahead and make the purchase.
A web visitor cannot touch or feel the product; a professional, well-clicked, clear and crisp image does the trick!
No matter how good you are as a photographer, it is impossible to get that perfect image ready to be uploaded in a single click. There are hundreds of modifications involved before an image achieves that clear and crisp look that finally make their way into product listings.
Background, brightness, sharpness, cropping, resizing, color defects etc are required before your image is ready to go on the portal.
While you may not have the expertise or the time to do it yourself, there are product image editing and retouching services providers available who have a solid understanding of commercial photos and therefore provide tailor made solutions to your image editing needs based on your requirement.
Overview of the Services Offered:-
Background Correction – When you click a photograph, it may not always be possible to get the perfect background. A proper background can enhance the appearance of the image and make the product more real.
Moreover some portals like eBay want images against a white background only. The image editing experts add, remove and correct background as per your requirement without actually changing the actual image.
Photo Retouching –
This includes removing unnecessary spots, blemishes and adjusting the light, brightness etc with the help of photo retouching techniques. These techniques are particularly useful when working on portrait or human faces.
Photo Enhancement – What is the first thing that strikes you about the images on ecommerce portals? Well…they don’t look like photos and make the shoppers feel as if they are looking at actual products!
That’s the trick.
Balancing the color and contrast of the images along with brightness, adjusting the backgrounds as light or dark to enhance the overall appearance and cropping to remove unnecessary elements from the frame all form a part of photo enhancement services.
In short it helps set the right tone and make the image come to life.
Image Masking – While showcasing your product you might want to highlight certain portions while hide certain ones. This is what image masking does.
This technique would take care of hazy backgrounds, blurred edges, unwanted feathers, hair etc in the image. It is an advanced technique to fine-tune the images and give it real-life appearance.
There are different masking techniques used as per the client’s requirement like Layer masking, Alpha Channel masking, Translucent Image Masking, Collage Masking etc.
Shadow effects Image editing – Shadows add more depth and texture to an otherwise flat image. The drop shadow technique is particularly useful when you wish to showcase a white image against a white background.
The shadow effect will help distinguish the product.
Shadows make the images appear more real and natural creating an impression that you are looking at a real object on a surface rather than just an image. High quality images enhance customer experience thereby increasing sales and revenue.
After all they aren’t here to buy the image, they are here to buy the product and an image is simply a representation of the actual product online. So you want to make it as the close to reality as possible.
Ghost Mannequin –
Especially useful in case of apparels and accessories, mannequins help buyers understand the fit, style and appearance better. But getting real model or mannequin and then styling them with the product is both expensive and time-consuming.
Well…it doesn’t have to be!
The professional photo editors have a solution. They create invisible mannequins to give the shoppers an idea about the actual fit, style and appearance of the product.
Whether it’s the entire mannequin that you need or simply the upper body or lower body part like thighs, foot etc, the photo editors offer professionally edited ghost mannequins to suit your needs.
Color Variations – Another useful technique for apparels. Say you are selling a jacket that comes in multiple colors. How do you showcase product in each color? The obvious answer is to shoot all different colors.
This will not only take up a lot of time but also increase your photo shoot budget. The photo editors can help by creating different color variants of a product without you having to shoot different images.
Batch Processing/Resizing – The photo editors also offer image processing and resizing for images in bulk. They have the necessary tools and software to process/ resize large quantities of images via batch files.
This ensures both speed and efficiency which is important for any business.
They even make sure that all images processed are optimized for the web with proper size, dimension, resolution etc.
Outsourcing Image Editing and Retouching Services
Now that you know what image editing and retouching involves, you would probably agree that it is better to outsource this function to experts who have the both the necessary skills and the expertise to perform the task.
This will not only save you time and money but also guarantee efficiency as you will have experts on the task. There are many e-commerce service providers who offer this service to clients at reasonable rates! All you have to do is get in touch with one of them and discuss your requirements.
Here are some of the benefits that you get by outsourcing the image editing and retouching function:-
- Access the best talent in the industry
- Quick Turnaround Time (TAT)
- Leverage latest tools and image editing software
- Increases efficiency
- Customer Support
- Flexible Pricing Options with Free Trial
Choosing the right outsourcing partner is never easy especially when you have many choices. Assess your own requirements, take time to do your research and consider your options before deciding on an outsourcing partner. Outsourcing may not be everybody but if done right it can help you save time, spend less and earn more!
