Quality Is What They Care – UK Retail House Partnered with Smart Photo Editors for Product Image Clipping

The Client – Award-winning UK Sports Apparel Retailer

Founded in 1982 and based in the UK, the client is a group of retail sports apparel suppliers that have grown to become one of the largest and most known companies in the country. Believing in convenience and versatility, they have grown their supply chain to include multi-brand, multi-chain, and international items.

As a proactive company offering each customer an unrivaled range of high-quality and leading brands, they aspire to be a sports and lifestyle retailer that can deliver sustainable growth for their shareholders, with medium to long term goals.

Their achievements have been profound - including 5,100 new jobs in the UK being created by them where they currently have over 17,000 directly engaged staff. Helping their country by contributing an astounding £465m in UK Corporation Tax - that for their efforts and success, they were given the title of “Public Company” in the UK in 2007.

Requirements for the Image Clipping Project

Contacting our team at Smart Photo Editors (SPE) through inbound means, the client approached for a project involving images they had of popular sales items that needed to be clipped and edited for website and advertising purposes.

We were required to remove the mannequins present in the original images and place the clothing and stock onto a separate white background. We also needed to resize, enhance, and touch up 800 images a week.

Challenges Tackled by Our Image Editing Team

The major challenges that our team faced were due to the volume of the images needing attention in a short amount of time. We were required to provide an output of 200 images a day.

There was also some difficulty in the image retouching as the client was very particular about how each image was to be edited. Their biggest priority was removing wrinkles from clothing to ensure a smoother look in the final images while insisting the natural look. In order to contend with these requirements, we chose our team members to include our most proficient and experienced image editing specialist. We also kept an open line of communication with the client for frequent procedure checks, as well as involving our in-house QC managers.

The Step-by-step Process Followed by SPE’s Editors

At Smart Photo Editors, each of our team members is backed by years of image editing experience, which includes professional clipping and retouching skills. We assigned two dedicated resources to work with this client, making sure to go over and above the mark in providing the professional excellence we have known for. Our process was as follows:

1. We started the project with a process meeting to clarify exactly what was needed and when, after which the files were sent to us in jpeg format.
2. Our editors began by planning the clipping path and removing the mannequins.
3. Next, we recreated the ‘back’ of each item to keep a realistic effect.
4. We removed the backgrounds and added in the requested white backdrops.
5. The clothing neck joining was fixed, and wrinkles were removed as per request.
6. These images were sent to our QC for quality checking.
7. Finally, we sent the completed batches to the client.

Takeaways – Quality Deliverables Adhering to the Agreed Timeline

Staying true to their well-earned reputation, the client wanted to ensure each image was presented with exceptional quality and care. By choosing to work with us, the client not only receive the exact edited images they required but also enjoyed a professionally managed project at a 70% cost saving. They were immensely impressed with our work ethic and productivity and have since handed over similar projects for us to complete.