Many real estate photographers and realtors will outsource their photo editing to large editing companies that charge per photo and promise a 24-hour turnaround. While this initially sounds like a great idea to save time and money, is it actually worth it?
In some cases, these services are worth sending the price because they provide access to more advanced editing, such as Virtual Staging, removing large objects from photos, virtual twilight shots, and high-quality rendering. These services all require years of experience and/or a powerful computer to get good results, and are often cheaper than paying a photographer or other professional who doesn't specifically specialize in said services. Plenty of professional photographers will specifically use these services themselves because they can do a quicker, better job than they can themselves, often overcharging for the service as well as passing it off as their own work.
The main issue with these companies is the lack of clear and easy communication, as well as the fact that they haven't been, and will likely never be, to the property they are editing the photos of. This is important because human eyes perceive light and color slightly differently from what cameras capture, and the experience of being in the property is the best way to make sure colors and details appear in photos as they appear in real life.
Another large issue is that most companies will have a specific preset edit they do to every photo, regardless of whether the property is a large, multi-million dollar mansion or a small shack in the woods. This means that every property is stripped of its personality to be fit into one mold that isn't representative of the majority of houses, and leads to the property looking worse in photos than in real life, likely causing potential buyers to move on to other listings without giving the listing the attention it deserves.
Below is a comparison of the difference in quality between photos edited by the photographer and those same photos edited by a third party. Each comparison starts with a slide of the two shots, starting with the photographer's edit, followed by the outsourced edit. The photos are then preceded by a description of the most noticeable issues, with an accompanying image pointing out the exact problem areas.
As you can see when switching between the two photos, they look quite different. The main reason for that is that, even though the third party had access to all the same photos and metadata, the third party didn't do any lens distortion corrections, causing the lines on the driveway and house to be visibly warped. This lack of distortion correction is seen in all the other examples on this page, even though, in the order notes, we specifically requested the distortion to be corrected and gave all the information for it to be done in the press of a button.
Another issue is the intensly over saturated colors on the right side of the frame and the crushed shadows on the left side. These are both likely products of the preset edits, which often use specific edits to both correct for people usually overexposing exterior shots and provide more punchy colors, which this specific photo, as well as the majority of other photos, did not benefit from.
As mentioned before, the third party didn't do any lens distortion corrections, causing the lines of the walls and doorframes to be visibly warped.
Another issue is that, even though they had access to all the same photos the photographer did, and despite being asked to use the flash shot to make the windows and blinds look more natural, they refused to use the flash shot, resulting in very dark blinds and windows, and unnatural colors. They also made the walls and floor very dark and muddy-looking. Once again, this is almost definitely because the presets they use didn't work well with the photos provided. Normally, you could easily fix this by adjusting some edits to better fit the space, but whether it's a product of the editor being rushed, the editor not knowing what the interior looked like originally, or a little bit of both, they clearly didn't deem it worthy of fixing.
Once it was clear they weren't going to use any of the flash shots provided, this photo got re-edited as an attempt at leveling the playing field by quickly editing the photo without the flash shot and attempting to match the speed at which they'd likely be editing. As you can see in the photographer's edited image, there is a lot more of a color cast, which is a result of not using the accompanying flash shot.
The main issues in the outsourced photo are related to color. The editor made the photo extremely undersaturated and yellow, with only the most orange wood having full color. They also messed up the masking of the ceiling and included some of the lights over the sink, leading to them having an obvious line where the intersection of the wall and ceiling would be, with the top being heavily desaturated, and the bottom looking more like the rest of the photo. This is likely a complete oversight by the editor who, in an attempt to make the ceiling look whiter, messed up, which makes the edit more noticeable and less natural-looking. They also crushed the shadows again, as noticeable on the cabinetry and vent hood. The lack of distortion correction is less noticeable on this photo, but if you look for it, it is also present.
This photoset is unique. We originally sent the outsourced editor one set of photos, which was slightly further back, and edited another, which was slightly closer. Everything stayed the same between the two photos except the actual position, with the outsourced photo including a bit of the counters on either side. Other than that, both photos are identical for comparison purposes.
The main issue, as you can clearly see, is that the outsourced editor made the walls green. This isn't just a completely random mistake; the walls were a relatively light grey with a little bit of a green tint to them, which, combined with the white light from outside and the warm light coming from the lights behind the camera, looked pretty green at some points. If they had looked at the provided flash image, they would have seen that the walls are grey and not a dark green, but it appears they werent paying enough attention. They also made the floor very blue when it was a lot more muted in person, and they messed up the masking, so the tile on the bottom right that is touching carpet is very warm and orange instead of the cool blue they made the rest of the floor. Also, a slightly less noticeable mistake was the fact that they didn't remove a light flare that was coming from the window behind the tub, which is much brighter than the rest of the grey room. They also, once again, did not correct the lens distortion, causing the right wall to look very bent, and the doorframes to look like they are leaning away from each other.
With all the issues in editing, as well as the fact that most outsourced editing companies will take up to 24 hours to fix any poorly edited photos, usually replacing them with photos that look slightly better but have other issues, outsourcing the color and detail editing for your photos will likely take more time and be more expensive than just editing your own photos. When I first started real estate photography, the number of people telling me to "just pay for an editing company to edit everything" really struck me as odd. When shooting portraits, I would have never imagined taking a photo exactly how I envisioned it just to send it to someone else to edit it for me. And as a real estate photographer, it frustrates me to shoot a property exactly how I want it or the agent wants it, just to gamble the quality of the images on which editor gets sent my photos to edit.
In conclusion, a poorly shot photo with perfect editing will always beat a perfectly shot photo with bad editing, so why trust someone who knows nothing about the property and is expected to edit each photo in a minute?