By Tata Rossi 19 days ago, Apps and Software
GlobalPhotoEdit Services
Verdict: GlobalPhotoEdit has an unclear pricing system that is frequently mentioned in user reviews. The agency claims that you can get their retouching services for as low as $0.5 per image, but that price is only relevant for very small adjustments.
Full-fledged image editing will cost you between $2 and $5 per photo, which is higher than the market average. Moreover, the quality of the photos often leaves much to be desired, even when it comes to product photography, which is this agency’s specialty.
GlobalPhotoEdit provides product retouching services, the cost of which begins at $2 per photo.
✖ Aimed at large clients. This agency is a rather poor choice if you're simply looking to enhance a couple of photos or require subtle changes. It's more oriented toward larger businesses. Additionally, this company offers discounts on large orders, starting from 15% off if you order more than 500 photos a month.
✖ Nontransparent pricing policy. The pricing section on the official site mentions 5 price points that range from $0.5 to $3 per photo. However, the service sections feature drastically different prices, which confuses a lot of clients who don’t know which prices are the correct ones. Moreover, the agency mentions that the price can change based on the editing complexity.
✔ Additional options for product images. In addition to standard color correction and background removal, this agency can also add watermarks to your photos, preventing unsanctioned use of your intellectual property.
✔ Sufficient amount of information on the website. The official website offers a step-by-step breakdown of the ordering process while going over all the upload requirements. You’ll be assigned your own account and you can send your photos using Dropbox, FTP, We Transfer, or Google Drive.
✖ Inaccurate resizing and cropping results. Even though the company mostly offers batch editing, a lot of customers complain that the delivered photos aren’t edited in the same style.
Clipping path services are provided for nearly all covered packages, but you can also request it separately for as low as $1.5 per photo.
✔ Employ various masking techniques. GlobalPhotoEdit provides edge smoothing in addition to regular clipping path. Additionally, you can request masking to make your images feel more alive. You can have the editors enhance your product photos with layer, translucency/transparency, or alpha channel masking.
✖ Sloppy results. The agency’s employees aren’t great at performing edge smoothing, as the results often suffer from deformed shapes and product edges. Additionally, the added shadows and reflections often look unrealistic.
✔ Free trial. GlobalPhotoEdit allows you to have 3 photos processed for free.
✖ Clunky chat. The website has a live chat feature, but you won’t receive a response as quickly as you might hope. It’s also rather inconvenient since you have to provide your email address before you can begin the chat.
The agency provides multiple item removal services that encompass backdrop processing and object deletion.
✔ Non-destructive backdrop deletion. GlobalPhotoEdit employs Photoshop’s layer-focused functionality to ensure the original file remains untouched and all adjustments are added to separate layers.
✖ Unprofessional cleaning results. The agency provides a Cleaning service that entails the removal of small flaws, distracting details, dirt specs, etc. However, even after this service, the photos still often have traces of removed objects.
✔ Background processing. For instance, you can ask to increase its contrast, gradient, or add a solid color. The retouchers can perform any background manipulation you want including color correction, white balance adjustments, etc.
✖ Not a lot of experience working with complex backgrounds. It’s clear that the agency’s retouchers usually only deal with single-tone and transparent backgrounds, which is evident from the examples included in the portfolio.
✖ Unappealing ghost mannequin results. A common issue you'll notice when ordering the ghost mannequin service is that the product photo looks flat and unappealing. The clothes lose their shape and look as if they were photographed without a mannequin.
The agency doesn’t provide separate color correction services but they are included in all the other service packages.
✖ Problems with green tones. You can find plenty of GlobalPhotoEdit review examples mentioning that the company's retouchers aren't great at working with this tone. It often looks unnatural, overly distracting, or unpleasantly light green.
✖ Texture changes after color replacement. The agency performs color replacements, but the results often suffer from overly smoothened product textures. The retouchers also frequently forget about the smaller details, keeping their original colors, which makes the image look unnatural and unappealing.
✖ Subtle color adjustments. You don’t always need in-depth color correction. Sometimes it’s enough to balance out the brightness, saturation, and other color parameters. The agency provides this service for portrait, lifestyle, and newborn photos.
The price for jewelry retouching services here can go higher than $5 per photo since these are extremely difficult products to edit.
✔ Genre-specific options. In addition to standard product editing options, the company also provides the ability to replace the precious stones in your photos. Its retouchers can also change the size of the gemstones and renovate the look of older jewelry items in your images.
✖ Distorted metal look. Sadly, GlobalPhotoEdit experts overdo the image polishing, making the metal lose its qualities. As such, the jewelry in the photo ends up looking unrealistic, which doesn't meet eCommerce photography standards.
✖ Don’t add the material standard marking. The company doesn’t allow you to add the standard marking to your jewelry item in the photo. Such a small option would have made the service more universal and suitable for a larger number of clients.
✔ Available portfolio. The jewelry editing section offers a large selection of completed projects. It would have been great if all the other services had a similar expansive portfolio.
The agency offers portrait retouching services for individual, group, and lifestyle portraiture. It can also work with both raster and vector stock images.
✔ Requirement discussion. GlobalPhotoEdit discusses all the requirements for my order over email, phone, or chat. Such communication allows you to specify the desired editing style, request specific changes, and find out answers to any questions you may have to minimize the number of future revisions.
✖ Unnatural face and body look. The retouchers tend to go overboard when increasing the size of different facial features, making the model look artificial. If you want to order body reshaping services, then you’ll be fine as long you only request subtle curve and shape correction.
✔ Edit RAW images. Portrait photography is usually done in RAW format and thankfully, you don’t have to convert your photos before sending. The agency even recommends you upload your images in this format to ensure the colors look as natural and visually appealing as possible after going through post processing.
✖ Doesn’t provide high-end retouching. This agency doesn’t offer high end retouching, as it’s mainly focused on doing bulk image editing, which is usually limited to basic changes.
✔ Dedicated service for headshots. Headshot retouching is a separate service that includes teeth-whitening, in-depth blemish deletion, eye color correction, and much more. However, it’s still missing photo manipulation options, since headshots can often benefit from adjusting the head tilt, eye openness level, etc.
The provided wedding photo retouching service covers basic edits as well as the option to make special requests like photo album design for $4.49 per page or HDR image blending for $4.99 per photo.
✔ Custom retouching. The client can choose the style and depth of the performed editing. You can ask for subtle color correction and basic facial retouching or detailed model post processing, background adjustments, and application of creative effects.
✖ All photos in the portfolio are of the same type. Even though GlobalPhotoEdit offers different options for wedding photos, the results showcased on the website are rather limited. It looks like all the photos in the portfolio are from the same order.
✖ Automated editing. When analyzing the images in the portfolio, many experienced photographers will notice that the agency’s representatives used Lightroom presets. You can see the same thing with photos from other genres like newborn. In doing so, the retouchers don’t pay enough attention to notice when the filter doesn’t match the photo.
GlobalPhotoEdit offers both basic and advanced newborn photo editing, the cost of which starts at $1.5 per photo.
✔ Virtual stylization. Clients often take newborn photos at home or in a studio without thematic props. In this case, the agency can stylize the photo according to your requirements. However, it’s unclear how much you’ll have to pay for this service.
✖ Overly retouched faces. The retouchers use the same techniques for enhancing newborn photos as they do for adult portraits. As a result, the baby's face often looks like a mask, much to the client's disappointment. Newborn faces usually only need to be made a little less red, rid of acne and tone-aligned.
✖ Poor-quality manipulations. This genre isn't the agency's specialty, which is further confirmed by the presented manipulation results. The retouchers can drastically deform the shape of the baby's head, twist its arm at an unnatural angle, etc.
Real estate photo editing here is longer compared to other services, as you can expect to receive the result in 1-2 business days.
✖ Images are incompatible with listing marketplaces. The websites that host real estate photos and virtual tours have additional content requirements that this agency doesn’t account for. As a result, the delivered photos might be unsuitable for the desired platform, meaning you’ll have to spend more of your time adjusting the images to the site’s standards.
✖ Don’t offer special services. You can only order basic editing, as this agency doesn’t provide some of the more specialized options for realtors. It would have been great if it added virtual staging to the list of services since it already does object replacements.
✔ Prepare the photo for your listing. You can order lawn or sky replacements, or have the window view changed or enhanced.
✖ No empty room option. Sadly, GlobalPhotoEdit doesn’t delete furniture and decorations from room photos. The agency can only get rid of certain objects, so if you want to clear up the entire space or order virtual renovation, you’ll have to approach a different company.
The agency also offers photo restoration services that are aimed at fixing various types of damage including water, fire, tears, discoloration, etc.
✔ Resolution increase. The editors can restore any part of a photo that has deteriorated over time. The company’s experts can increase the sharpness and resolution whenever needed. You can also order background blurring, or vignette effects that work nicely with vintage photos.
✖ Poorly colored photos. You can have the agency colorize old B&W images, but you might not be pleased with the results. The editors choose colors that don’t match the photo's style, making them look alien in vintage pictures.
✖ High price. If you compare the cost of the service to the delivered quality, it’s evident that the price of $20 per image is way too high.
Nearly all GlobalPhotoEdit services are offered in standard and pro editing packages depending on the number of included options and their complexity. Additionally, the agency can individually calculate the cost of more complex projects.
Product image retouching will cost you between $2 to $4 per photo while portrait retouching will send you back $5 per picture.
Jewelry retouching is available for as low as $1.5 per photo and can go up to $5. Wedding photo editing is priced at $3.99 per photo while the cheapest newborn retouching costs $1.5.
Backdrop removal can be purchased for $0.5 per photo while the cost for clipping path ranges from $0.5 to $2.
Corporate clients can expect to receive discounts on large orders. When making a single order that contains 500 photos or more, you’ll receive 15% off. When ordering 1000+ photos the discount is increased to 30%.
Verdict: FixThePhoto is the market leader when it comes to offering professional editing services for different genres. The agency’s team of experts approaches each order with special care regardless of whether it’s a corporate or individual client while always delivering professional results, unlike GlobalPhotoEdit.
FixThePhoto also offers a broader selection of services for realtors compared to the hero of this review. For instance, you can take advantage of a hyper-realistic rendering service and day to dusk options, which are always popular among professional real estate agents.
Verdict: WeEdit.Photos provide top-tier retouching results for all photography genres they work with. Unlike GlobalPhotoEdit, this company offers high-end editing as well as other types of advanced corrections.
The support team is highly reliable and available 24/7 while providing timely responses to all your inquiries. The website features an expansive portfolio that shows examples of completed projects for each provided service.
Verdict: Pixc usually collaborates with eCommerce enterprises by providing services for online stores. The agency also offers special services for stores hosted using Bigcommerce, Shopify, and Woocommerce plugins. Meanwhile, GlobalPhotoEdit doesn’t even optimize the edited images to match the requirements of the most popular marketplaces.
That said, Pixc clients mention the inconvenient navigation of the website and convoluted ordering process as the agency’s main drawbacks. Additionally, the delivered results often don’t meet the required quality standards and the turnaround time is usually longer than stated at the start of the collaboration.
Verdict: While ShootDotEdit offers fast delivery, its subscription-based pricing model that will cost you a bare minimum of $119 a month makes it hard to justify approaching this agency given the delivered price-to-quality ratio.
The website doesn’t provide a lot of information about the offered services. The agency only accepts large orders, which makes it similar to GlobalPhotoEdit, only the latter does work on individual orders as well. On the plus side, the tech support offered by this company is superior to GlobalPhotoEdit’s.
Verdict: RetouchGem outperforms GlobalPhotoEdit when it comes to product retouching results. The agency provides an expansive portfolio for all offered services, giving you a better idea of what you can expect from each option.
The company also accepts custom orders that don’t entirely fit into one of the default services. However, RetouchGem does rely on a rather inconvenient hour-based pricing model. The website mentions approximate order completion times and an hourly rate of 60EUR (about $65), while the cost of certain services is calculated individually.
Verdict: Ephotovn is another GlobalPhotoEdit alternative that suffers from overly high prices while delivering subpar quality results.
The agency provides subpar color correction services, performing significantly inferior compared to the hero of this review in this regard. On the plus side, Ephotovn offers a significantly larger range of real estate editing services, as it provides an empty room option as well as basic virtual renovation.
Verdict: Even though this agency has a relatively cheap asking price of $1.41 per photo, it’s hard to recommend Dropicts since it only provides basic services aimed at the eCommerce field. If you’re a portrait or wedding photographer, you’ll have to find a different company.
The agency’s employees can’t perform advanced image manipulations like object deletion or creative effect application, limiting themselves to color correction. The only advantage Dropicts has over GlobalPhotoEdit is that you’ll be dealing with a dedicated manager who'll supervise all aspects related to your order, ensuring there are no communication issues.
Verdict: ClippingPathExperts is known for its clipping path, masking, image retouching, ghost mannequin, drop shadow, and other advanced services. In contrast to GlobalPhotoEdit, this agency meets the quality expectations of its clients.
The company’s experts take between 1 to 3 workdays to complete an order, which is noticeably longer than GlobalPhotoEdit. On the plus side, ClippingPathExperts provide 35% off on bulk projects.
Verdict: Image Salon is an image retouching company that doesn’t feature any samples of past projects, while GlobalPhotoEdit has a comparatively expansive portfolio, at least for some services. The website has an appealing UI with several “before” photos, but there don’t seem to be any “after” versions anywhere.
While the company states that they offer professional services, it asks you to pay an extra fee for some options. Standard services like color correction and culling aren’t included in base packages while also being more expensive compared to most alternative agencies.
Verdict: Pixelz is often praised for its product retouching. The initial changes are done automatically, after which the photos are enhanced by the company’s experts. You can expect to receive the results within 48 hours, while GlobalPhotoEdit retouchers perform all the edits manually within a shorter timeframe.
The selection of provided options is larger compared to the agency covered in this review, as it includes cropping, border adjustments, and vertical alignment. You can also have the photo edited in different ways to make sure it matches the requirements of multiple platforms.
