What to consider when choosing a photo retouching service

There is a plethora of photo retouching services online and it can be a daunting task choosing the right one for you, below is a quick guide of the things you should consider.

Price

Most people focus on cost first. There are a number of free picture retouching apps and DIY services out there but if you’re not a pro the results will appear low quality and fake, in addition using these retouching services can be very time consuming.

If you want professional results it is best to use a professional photo retouching company. There are many professional photoshop services online where you effectively hire someone to photoshop a picture. The costs for can range from a few dollars a photo to several hundred.

Beware of anything charging less than a couple of dollars a photo, if you’re paying that you can’t expect good quality results, a good photo edit can take a designer up to 30 minutes, for $1 you will either get a rushed job or the company is likely using some automated software.

Equally you don’t have to pay $50 a photo to get good results, there are plenty of experts out there charging less than $10 a photo

Quality

What do you want to the picture retouching for?

Are you representing a business, building a website, editing your wedding photos? If you are then you want to make sure you use professional retouching services. If you are just having fun with your friends photos then a cheaper service or a DIY tool may do the trick.

Time

How quickly do you need the photos? Some photo retouching services offer a 1 week turnaround, some offer 24 hours, MIKU will do it for you in under 2 hours

Remember you will likely want further changes made so a 24 hour turnaround could turn into a week if there are multiple revisions

Revisions

Beware of any retouching services which don’t offer revisions or limit the revisions to 1 or 2. You may not get what you want and have to pay a second time for the same service, it also signals that the company doesn’t stand by the quality of their picture retouching.

You also need to check how long the revisions will take, some companies offer unlimited revisions but they don’t come back each time for several days, resulting in the customer just giving up because it is too hard or time is constrained.

MIKU offers unlimited revisions

Mobile vs. Desktop

Are you often on the run? Do you want to be able to submit, review and comment on photos while on the run? If yes then it is best to choose a provider which has a mobile friendly platform.

Many companies require you to be on a desktop compute to unzip and view the edited files. If you require mobile access the best is to choose a company with a iPhone or Android app such as MIKU.