What Outsourcing to India Really Looks Like

If you are like me, you probably get numerous emails and Facebook messages from people in India wanting you to use their services for your image editing. While these individuals may give outsourcing to India a bad reputation, I’m here to show you what it’s really like at the reputable post-production service provider that is located in Mumbai, India: Pro Image Editors.

What They Offer

Outsourcing your work can look a lot different depending on the type of photographer you are. The great thing about Pro Image Editors is that they cover pretty much every area of image editing. They have an entire department for photographers such as myself who want to outsource their wedding photography editing. If you are someone looking for portrait retouching, real estate editing, stock photo services, and much more, PIE covers all these areas as well.

The great thing about this system is that they have a department for any type of photography service you could be looking for. This means you are not going to get someone that knows a little bit of everything. Instead, your images will be edited by a person that has been specifically trained to perform the individual task they are assigned to. For example, if you send a wedding to get culled and edited, you will get image editors explicitly qualified for those jobs. They even take this a step further and have specific departments for culling and another for editing. 

The workplace at PIE is also strictly secured so that you don't have to worry about your images ending up in the wrong hands. Images are only accessible to the individual who is assigned to your job. The machines are locked down so that it's impossible for images to be pulled off of a computer and onto an external drive or USB stick. Additionally, workstations are not connected to the Internet, and the editing personnel is not aware of any names or addresses. Instead, editors are assigned jobs through the use of unique client codes.

Working for PIE

One thing that you can be certain of when you send your images to PIE is that the employees editing your work are not only trained well, but are also compensated appropriately. Each employee goes through an extensive training program for the job for which they are applying. This isn’t simply on-the-job training. Instead, employees attend college-like courses at an off-site school that specializes in the various skills PIE workers need.

One of the questions I had when visiting the facilities in India was centered around culling: How does someone from India know what is culturally significant in a wedding from another country? The way they handle this issue is that the people assigned to the job of culling actually go through cultural training. If the person, for example, is going to be assigned to cull German weddings, their training will incorporate crucial aspects for that type of wedding. That way they make sure to include moments that may not have great images, but are still culturally significant.

When it comes to people in charge of editing, colors become a very important aspect of their job. In this case, editors are given tests on color accuracy, each monitor is consistently calibrated, and the working environment is controlled to minimize outside factors that could affect color.

 
Besides the job-specific training, PIE also offers development opportunities for their employees within the company. This can be as simple as moving up to a group leader role for their specific group or moving into other roles outside the scope of editing. Some of the other positions they offer include quality control, customer service, and other managerial duties.

When it comes to compensation, employees are paid in two ways. The first one is by a base salary, which is comparable to what a teacher would make. From here, employees have the opportunity to earn raises of up to 300-400 percent based on output. The important thing here is that PIE values quality over quantity. Every job that is delivered gets checked. If a job fails quality control or gets returned by a customer to be redone, that job no longer counts towards the possible bonus. This is important to know because people could have negative views toward outsourcing to India based on the perception that they might be funding a company with poor working conditions as well as bad ethics. But this is far from the truth when dealing with PIE.

Right now, PIE doing a giveaway. In order to participate and get a chance to win PIE credits worth $50, complete the following steps:

1. Go to www.proimageeditors.eu/first50.

2. Sign up for your free PIE account.

3. Place an order within 10 days after signing up in order to be entered into the giveaway.

4. If you sign up quickly, place an order. If you are one of the first 50, you’ll be notified about the coupon.
 
*This giveaway is also valid for existing customers.

The great part about this giveaway is that all new customers will get a free trial of up to 500 images color-corrected in Lightroom and up to two images retouched in Photoshop for free just for signing up, even if they are not one of the first 50 people.