You're a business owner and have to take on many roles. Whether it's marketing or customer service, many times it seems like the only way to have low overhead is to do everything on your own. However, when it comes to creating a graphic element for your website or a marketing campaign, "DIY" can be a silent time killer. Ever stopped to wonder how much time you spend adjusting contrast, getting rid of backgrounds and color correcting product photos? If not, there's no better time to perform an in-depth time audit. You may find out that it is not only a luxury to collaborate with the professional photo editing service but also a financial need.

Why DIY Photo Editing Isn't Really Free

The photographs are the selling point of a campaign or a new batch of products uploaded to your ecommerce store. It's easy to try doing the post-production yourself or pass it off to a member of your existing team who has "a bit of Photoshop". Since you don't have to pay an outside person for this work, it seems totally free.

This is, however, an illusion which is dangerous! Every minute spent on cloning out a speck of dust or adjusting shadow or aligning margins is a minute that is being taken away from revenue-generating tasks. The actual cost does not equal zero because the actual cost equals the value of your time times the amount of time you spend gazing at pixels.

How to Calculate the True Cost of In-House Photo Editing

An in-house editing time audit is essential to fully comprehend the financial consequences of in-house editing. This is a simple 3-step process which every entrepreneur should follow this week:

1. Track the Micro-Moments: Don't just guess how long it takes, measure them. Next set of pictures, set the timer. Include the time it takes to import the files, make the edits, export them in the correct formats, and upload them to your content management system. It might seem like five minutes but really, it's more like fifteen.

2. Calculate the True Hourly Rate: True Hourly Rate. If you're the founder, how much is your time worth per hour? If you want to earn $100,000 annually, you will be paid approximately $50 per hour.

3. Multiply by Monthly Volume: Take that weekly cost and multiply by volume per month. Suppose you've got ten hours a week to edit, which is $2000 a month of work that is really "spent" on post-work. That figure is easy to beat with dedicated photo editing service transparent pricing.

Beyond Time: The Hidden Expenses of In-House Photo Editing

There's so much more to the cost of DIY post-production than just the hourly rate. Consider the infrastructure needed to generate good images. The professional editing software is very costly and charges a monthly fee. Such a setup involves large upfront costs and requires high-end computers with fast processors and calibrated monitors.

Moreover, there are very real costs when it comes to the quality inconsistency. Your team may end up with a sloppy job if they are in a hurry. In ecommerce, subpar photos result in increased returns, and in marketing, subpar photos result in decreased conversions. That's why it often makes sense to hire a dedicated image editing service; not only are you saving time, you're making sure of consistency and professionalism that you cannot get when editing images on your own.

How DIY Photo Editing Slows Business Growth

Obviously, the biggest hidden is opportunity cost. If you weren't bound to an editing desk, what would you be doing?If you weren't stuck to an editing desk, what would you be doing? A founder who is working late at night on removing backgrounds is not actually networking, pitching investors or closing sales.

Now, in the digital age, being fast to the market is all-important. The one thing you don't want to miss is if you have a new product line sitting on a hard drive waiting to be retouched, then you are missing out on potential sales daily! Your business becomes agile once you remove this hindrance and let the professionals take care of photo editing. Campaigns can be shot on Monday, the raw files sent out and campaigns up and running on websites by Wednesday – no more missing a seasonal opportunity or an important launch window.

When Should You Outsource Your Photo Editing?

So, when is the perfect time to get out of the editing bay? If your time audit shows that you are spending more in hourly equivalents on post-production than you would if you outsourced it, it's a no brainer. Plus, if you have a lot of needs during specific periods of the year and not others, (such as hordes of needs during the holidays, and a small trickle of needs during the summer), it's very inefficient to have an in-house editor on staff at all times.

That's where scalable solutions come into play. A company like Visuals Clipping provides the flexibility to handle massive batches of images during your peak seasons without the overhead of a full-time hire. With outsourced image editing services, you can increase or decrease your output on a whim, depending on the needs of your business, and you only need to pay for what you need.

Final Thoughts: Reclaim Your Time and Grow Faster

Image post production is no longer an evil that you have to do alone. All the wasted hours, the costly software, the late launches and lost opportunities are quietly eroding your profits! Run your time audit this week. Be candid on the time frame, and what it is worth to your enterprise. It's likely that you will very soon discover that it would be one of the best decisions you make with a high return on investment. Take back your calendar, up your visual game, and let your brand be the best at what it does – grow your business!

Also Read: How DTC Brands Use Photo Editing and Video to Create High-Converting Product Pages