By Tata Rossi 17 days ago, Photo Editing Tips
ShootDotEdit Services
Verdict: Even though ShootDotEdit provides a quick turnaround, its subscription-based pricing structure with the cheapest plan costing $119 a month makes a lot of users believe that this agency doesn’t offer the expected price-to-quality ratio.
The site has insufficient information about its services. This leaves us with many questions: what does their workflow include? What exactly am I paying for? You cannot order a lot of additional services because they simply don’t exist in their pricing lists.
Color correction helps add a more intricate dimension to your images, establishing a certain tone or mood by emphasizing specific colors. A lot of customers complain about unnatural colors and under-/overexposed photos that also suffer from a weird skin tone.
✖ Long order placement process. To place an order on ShootDotEdit, you have to sign up by providing various info, including your company’s name, phone number, website as well as a physical address in case you order printed photos.
When you are ready to place an order, you will have to answer several questions regarding your project in a special form and select additional services if you need them, for example, culling, straightening, renumbering or renaming of images, time syncing, JPG upload or export, uploads to another site, picking DVD delivery or the Rush option if required.
✖ No examples of their work. ShootDotEdit doesn’t provide a separate page with examples of their work. In fact, you can’t find any before/after examples on the website. This is a huge drawback for any editing company.
✖ Poor photo quality. A lot of users claim that the color correction performed by this company looks highly unrealistic. It seems like their editors don’t regularly calibrate their monitors to ensure they view colors accurately and can deliver the expected level of quality when offering image editing services.
✔ Utilize modern tools. The agency relies on advanced photo editing software like Adobe Lightroom, which is the industry standard for handling color correction, image editing, and styling.
✖ No mobile application. ShootDotEdit is available exclusively as an online solution, which is why its creators haven’t developed a separate photo editing app. This is a notable drawback since a lot of customers would have preferred to place orders on their phones with just a few taps.
ShootDotEdit experts state that they are willing to take on any project and infuse your bridal photos with undeniable appeal as a part of their wedding photo retouching service. However, you’re unable to order this service unless you get a subscription for the agency’s Unlimited or Rollover plan.
✖ Free trial isn’t what it seems. The initial month of the purchased subscription is considered to be the free trial. The agency states that this time is required to learn the client’s style and ensure quick future turnarounds.
It also claims that if you conclude that this service isn’t to your taste during those 30 days, you can cancel the subscription without paying any extra fees. However, the truth is that they do attach an extra cost for the work they’ve done.
✖ Unclear pricing. Subscriptions aren’t to everyone’s liking because they can feel like they handcuff you to a service and their cost can accumulate to insane numbers over time. The price for the subscription does not include culling, straightening, cropping, etc. Retouchers can provide them, but they must be paid for separately.
✔ Offer a free wedding image gallery website creation. This service is provided for free for all ShootDotEdit subscribers. This offer includes uploading your photos, designing a gallery, producing engaging email campaigns, and print delivery right to your door.
✖ No discounts for large orders. The agency doesn’t offer any discounts or bonuses to its customers, which is a huge disadvantage for wedding photographers, since they usually order image editing for entire wedding photoshoots from multiple events.
✖ No information regarding object removal from photos. To ensure the newlywed couple has all the viewer’s attention, retouchers usually remove distracting objects or people from the shot without leaving a single trace. However, ShootDotEdit doesn’t provide any information about whether they can provide this type of service or not.
This agency is also an option if you’re interested in a portrait editing service. The retouchers will enhance the shape of the model’s body, improve their skin texture, get rid of all flaws, and ensure the result looks realistic.
✖ Can stray away from the selected style when editing images. Even though the agency claims it will follow the editing style chosen by the customer, they don’t always deliver. A lot of reviews mention how inconsistent the retouchers are in their approach. It looks like they have their own methodology and aren’t willing to learn new techniques even if requested by the client.
✔ Handy blog. ShootDotEdit has amassed a large collection of useful articles including portrait and wedding photography tips that will be of interest to both beginners and professional photographers. The blog features tutorials, webinars, and case studies that contain a wealth of valuable information.
✖ The subject's skin can come across as looking too plastic. Users frequently bring up this specific skin airbrushing problem. In addition to performing unrealistic color correction, this agency delivers photos with a weird skin tone. They can also be careless when deleting blemishes, acne, and doing skin smoothing.
Culling involves the evaluation of all images taken during a photoshoot and picking the best ones for editing with the help of specialized software. This can be a rather time-consuming process, particularly if you’re dealing with a large number of photos.
✖ Demand an additional fee for this service. Even though this agency follows a subscription-based model, they still dare to ask for more money for photo culling, demanding $0.16 per image viewed. Most competitors include this service in their main packages.
✖ Confusing pricing policy and photo selection. The price for this service is calculated based on the “Overall” number of submitted photos. They claim that this is because the agency’s retouchers view the entire photoshoot 3 times to get a better sense of the overall mood, subject matter, and story. However, it’s not uncommon for objectively bad wedding and portrait photos to get mixed up with the good ones and be used for further editing.
✔ Client support. One of the main advantages of ShootDotEdit is its customer support team. Chat is open around the clock. You can also call the support team (from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. PST) and get qualified advice using the phone number published on the website.
ShootDotEdit provides its services only by subscription. You cannot order editing for one or several images without paying $119 or $299 a month. It is worth noting that this price does not include such services as culling, straightening, cropping, etc. Retouchers can provide them, but they must be paid for separately.
According to ShootDotEdit reviews, the main difference between the two offered plans is the number of available orders for one month. In the case of Rollover, it will be limited.
Verdict: Unlike ShootDotEdit, FixThePhoto makes it easy to find all the information you might be interested in regarding its services and the specific types of techniques and edits they can bring to the table. Additionally, this company offers its own mobile application that makes it a lot more convenient to place and manage your orders.
All you have to do is specify your requirements, respond to a couple of follow-up questions from a consultant, and wait one day to receive your enhanced images. One of the biggest advantages of this agency is its strict adherence to all deadlines.
FixThePhoto provides a 15% discount for any orders that end up costing over $600. If you’re a return customer who’s been ordering services for over 6 months or has spent more than $2,000, then this agency will also offer 30% off for any projects within the next half year.
Verdict: WeEdit.Photos are one of the biggest players on the market, as their experts are highly regarded for their retouching, graphic design, and digital art skills. The combination of an experienced team and reasonable pricing has made this agency one of the go-to choices for photographers all around the world.
WeEdit.Photos managers are all great at communicating with their clients. You can begin the collaboration process by creating an account and uploading your photos to the official website. Another advantage that this agency has over ShootDotEdit is that it’s willing to offer discounts for bulk orders.
For instance, if your order ends up costing over $300, you’ll receive 15% off, and if the total amount will be bigger than $1,500, the discount will be bumped up to 30%.
Verdict: Retouchup was created by the members of Hollywood FotoFix Inc., which is an important name in the retail photo restoration market. This agency has been active since 1993 and has eventually decided to also provide services aimed at professional photographers.
It should be noted that similarly to ShootDotEdit, this company isn't a particularly good fit for portrait photographers, as it only provides 3 portrait retouching levels. There's a basic package titled Complete Retouch that includes teeth whitening, skin retouching, and other similar tasks and also a Special Services package that is fine-tuned to your exact needs.
Verdict: This agency was established by two wedding photographers hailing from Montreal, Canada. Even though they started collaborating as early as 2007, they created The Image Salon significantly later, in 2014. In contrast to ShootDotEdit, this agency provides a 25% discount for your first order.
The process of creating an account and placing your order is rather time-efficient. You simply have to provide some info about yourself, create an order, upload the images, and wait for the agency’s representative to reach out to you and accept the order.
Verdict: Ephotovn provides background deletion, clipping path, high end photo retouching, and an array of other services and has already earned the satisfaction of over 3,000 customers. Their employees have already edited more than 5 million photos.
Just like ShootDotEdit, this agency provides a free trial option, as it lets you try its service for free by having its retouchers enhance one of your images. In contrast to ShootDotEdit, Ephotovn doesn’t limit the number of revisions you can request and will continue working on your order until you’re happy with the result or request a refund.
Verdict: Color Experts International offers image manipulation services, 3D modeling, video editing, ad design, desktop and pre-press publishing services, and much more while having more than 30 years of experience.
The first drawback you’ll notice here is that the agency’s site is littered with unnecessary elements and suffers from poor loading times regardless of how fast your internet is. When creating an account, you have to provide your email, password, and name before uploading your photos to the agency’s site.
Verdict: IIPVAPI is an established company that has more than 17 years of professional experience. It offers a broader scope of services compared to ShootDotEdit, as it includes image masking, retouching, clipping path, background replacement & cloning, sharpening, etc.
Even though the quality of their work can sometimes be low, they provide a free trial that allows clients to see what they can get from this agency. For more information, you can check out the detailed service descriptions and sample portfolio on the official website.
Verdict: Both Photza and ShootDotEdit provide higher-priced services than most of their competitors. This agency invites you to pick from a varied selection of services, including photo restoration services.
It’s also worth noting that this option isn’t as accommodating to personalized requests as ShootDotEdit since it only lets you pick one of three image editing packages with little room for customization.
Verdict: FlipRetouch provides an array of services including portrait, body, high-end, newborn, product photo editing, cartoonifying, and many others. Its retouchers are willing to perform the necessary revisions until you’re happy with the result without asking for additional money. Meanwhile, ShootDotEdit doesn’t mention revisions in its service descriptions at all.
Verdict: In contrast to ShootDotEdit, BEEPEC doesn't work with wedding and portrait photos. On the flip side, they are willing to continue working on your photos until you're completely happy with their look without asking for an extra fee.
This agency has an asking flat rate price of $0.8 per image. Additionally, you can take advantage of the free trial offer to test the service and have BEEPEC come up with a specific quotation.
