When Does It Make Sense to Outsource Your Post-Processing

In the last couple of weeks I?ve had a couple of readers point out to me that there are some sites available now that will do some aspects of your post processing for real estate photographers. The two specific sites that were pointed out were exposiohdr.com?(HDR processing) and pre-view.org?(360 stitching). I haven?t tried either of these sites and my whole point here is not about these particular services. These are just examples of services that will do you HDR processing or stitch your spherical 360 images. The point I want to make is more about the?philosophy of when it makes sense to outsource some part of your process like this.

My initial reaction to outsourcing post-processing is negative and it?s taken me a while to think about why I feel this way. Here are some of the reasons it doesn?t feel right for me:

1. It seems like a core part of any great business needs to be always looking for ways to continually improve your business process. If you outsource a piece of it, that?s one part you have less control over and are not likely to improve.
2. For people new in this business it seems like post-processing is a part of the business where you want to be in total control and totally involved because there are plenty of?opportunities?to learn and improve.
3. One of the reasons I got into real estate photography was that my wife was using bamboo.com (a 360 virtual tour vendor in the mid-1990?s) That was taking several days to schedule and shoot 360 virtual tours and I found I could cut that part of our process down to less than a day if I did it. My wife wanted to be able to commit to our listing customers exactly when their home would be on the market. The more people/companies we had in the loop to get a listing on the market the less we could predict how long the process took.
4. Admittedly post=processing is a part of the process I enjoy and am pretty good at so it?s not in my nature to give it away to someone else and let them have all the fun.
5. Post is frequently where you can give your work it?s own unique look and feel. You loose that if you have someone else do it.

Despite all these objections to outsourcing I realize there are some situations where if you are shooting 4 or 5 properties a day at some point in an effort to have a life, outsourcing some piece of your process to a?competent vendor can be an economic?benefit.? To me this is the only excuse and even then I?d rather train someone in the family or an assistant to help out full or part time.

What do others think about outsourcing post? Does it make sense for you?

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