v.bampton Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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I've offered similar services in the UK for 6 years now, so perhaps I can offer the other side of the coin...
Yes some companies do outsource to India, and I've tried some of those Indian companies - and decided against such a course. Nothing against India, but you don't get the same person doing your work each time, so there's no consistency, and some of them are better than others. That's not a compromise I've been willing to make.
Some other companies have also expanded too quickly, with the same problems. As you know, to become really skilled at processing takes time - I was concerned that the quality dropped and there were blown highlights all over the place. Rookie mistakes.
I'm busy training a guy to take some of my work, but it'll be at least a year before I let him loose on his own. These things take time to really learn well, and if you're paying for it, you want it done really well. For that reason I'd also hesitate to take on a local kid to do that work for you.
As far as the pricing goes, don't panic about that. With experience comes speed, and if you're doing thousands of photos every week, you become very quick at making decisions about what needs tweaking. They'll also be using top end hardware, so they won't be wasting time waiting for each photo to load.
If you choose to outsource the basic editing, you're not losing control - the company should learn your specific processing style and preferences, and then you're just saving yourself time getting them to a consistent standard, so that you then have time to enjoy putting your artistic touch to then if you want to do so. From experience, I've found that my regulars actually become more artistic because they get to focus on that instead of basic consistency.
So the summary:
Find out who's going to be doing the work, and get to know each other. They need to learn your preferences as everyone is different, and you need to know that the work is going to be of a consistently high quality.
Try it and see what works for you. You might find that you want to keep the culling, outsource the basic raw processing to get a consistent standard, and then do the artistic stuff yourself.
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