15K Artistically Edited Images Delivered to French Photo Studio

The Client – Paris-based Visual Content Provider

Established in 2016 and based in Paris, France, the client is a visual content provider for over 500 different brands and businesses boasting more than 500,000 completed photoshoots. They’re the first international team of image creators that create an artistic ecosystem of 20,000 professional photographers, videographers, and drone pilots. The client utilizes innovative technologies to strengthen the connection between brands and their consumers across every sector of the world.

Image Editing and Enhancement Requirements from the Client

With an expansive portfolio featuring diverse images across verticals, the client required image editing, image clipping, and advanced image enhancements. Needing the skills and speed of a top photo editing team, the client wanted to partner with an experienced image editing company.

The client discovered Smart Photo Editors (SPE) through an online search, and decided to contract the services due to the following:

  • Ability to commit to a long-term contract and devote the appropriate number of FTE resources towards completing and delivering approximately 15,000 images per month.
  • Utilization of the industry’s most sophisticated tools and technology towards all aspects of image editing, enhancement, and manipulation to ensure the finest outcome.
  • Proven portfolio of completed works within the client’s sectors to demonstrate SPE’s skills and quality.

Challenges Faced by Our Image Editing Team

SPE faced a couple of challenges while working on this high volume, high-end image editing, and enhancement project:

  • The client required SPE’s team to complete the volume in two-hour turnaround time with a 99.9% quality benchmark expectation.
  • The raw nature of many of the photos provided by the client was more time consuming to edit and manipulate, which demanded additional time and resources on SPE’s end.

SPE’s Approach to This Photo Editing and Enhancement Project

For this unique image editing assignment for real estate, fashion, retail, and portrait sectors, SPE developed a custom step-by-step process that would guarantee a favorable outcome:

  1. SPE began with a trial project and was immediately selected by the client for the full-time project.
  2. The client delivered the raw images in DNG and JPEG formats, and SPE assigned seven image editors, and two Quality Control leads to work exclusively on the project.
  3. For the image clipping and portraits, SPE used Photoshop to retouch and smooth skin and enhance colors and light.
  4. For wedding images, SPE used Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to remove background clutter, enhance colors, and perform subtle retouching.
  5. For real estate still images, only Photoshop was used to perform natural enhancements and day to dusk transitions; Photomatic was used for HDR blending; this was followed by manual blending with Photoshop and Lightroom.
  6. For retail images, photo enhancements, and high-end retouching was conducted for products and merchandise, including shadow adjustments, exposure modifications, and scaling.
  7. For eCommerce images, product clipping was completed, along with enhancements and shadow removal for electronics and automobiles.
  8. For fashion images, SPE did background correction, dust removal, and shine enhancements on jewelry, perfume, apparel, and accessories.
  9. SPE was able to successfully complete over 15,000 images per month at a monthly fee of $8,000.00, converting all images to JPEG format for final delivery to the client.

Additional Value Add in Terms of Effort and Software Capability

Our team at Smart Photo Editors added further value to the project by creating seamless, professional 360° virtual tours from some of the client’s real estate images. The team made use of Adobe Photoshop CC 2019, Lightroom, Photomatic, and Aurora to deliver the project with quality.

Project Benefits from the Project

This image editing project continues on a long-term basis for the foreseeable future, with the following key takeaways:

  • The client improved their processes due to SPE’s rapid turn-around time and high-end quality across all of the images.
  • SPE’s team received praise for our proactive approach to completing a huge volume of images on the client’s deadlines, with no revisions required.
  • SPE secured a valued, lucrative client on a long-term contract, and continues to augment our skills on this project with new, innovative techniques.
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