Digital photography. It’s a lovely thing, right? We can take a photo of just about anything — from the temperature on our icy dashboard to our fancified selves at a holiday party — and immediately crop, colorize, and share. But, hey, why take one photo when you can take 12 and get it Just. Right. Right? And those not-so-just-right ones? Eh, they can be deleted later.
But then you realize you’ve had your new phone for a matter of 50-some days and there are already 721 photos on it. 721! Of course, that doesn’t mean there are 721 photos that must go in an album. No, it means there are probably 342 pictures of your 2-year old’s forehead or the bathroom floor (crazed little hacker), 276 photos that should have been trashed in your quest for perfection, and 103 that might actually have some sort of value — assuming you have a few hours to properly crop, fix the lighting, and remove red eye.
I recently connected with the founder of Polish My Pics and he invited me to give their curating service a try. I uploaded 200 pictures to Dropbox, filled out their simple online form, and their staff de-duped (in other words, picked the best option of the duplicates), cropped, and adjusted the lighting on my photos. When they were done, they sent me a link to download their work. The folder included Before & After samples, Curated & Enhanced photos, Duplicates, Low Quality photos, Originals, and a PDF explaining each folder.
Here’s an example of a before:
And after:
Pretty cool, right? It turns out they can’t make your pictures look like you actually know how to take beautiful photography — I mean they can only work with what they’re given — but they can save a lot of time and make them photo book or print ready. And, should you need some major work done, they also provide retouching services.
*GIVEAWAY* Because I truly believe this is a time-saving service all parents can use, I’m hosting a giveaway. Leave a comment on this post — by Sunday, December 22, 2013 at 11:59pm PT — with your photo frustrations and you’ll be entered for the chance to win Photo Curation services from Polish My Pics on up to 200 photos. One winner will be chosen using Random.org.
*READER DISCOUNT* If you’re not interested in entering this giveaway or don’t win (boo!), you can give Polish My Pics a try and get 20% off Photo Curation services using my unique reader code at checkout: USINGOURWORDS1213 (Offer good for the first 100 people to enter the code.)
So, what do you think? Is this a service you would use? If so, what for? Holiday pics? Vacation photos? Seven and a half years of baby/kid/everything photos?
Disclosure: Polish My Pics provided their services to me at no charge for the purposes of this review. All opinions are my own.
Omg….piles an piles of photos I intend to edit/purge/organize and never get to. This would be a total treat. And every time I take a photoshop class I forget everything by the time I get a chance to sit down and really utilize what I learned 🙂
Congrats, Elisa! Random.org picked “1”, so you are the winner of this giveaway. I’ll be in touch via email with details. Thanks to all who entered!
got too ambitious and bought photoshop (too complicated), then elements (still figuring it out), and lightroom (still in box) thinking i’d attempt to edit/organize hundreds of photos. sounds like this service is what i need instead. i’d LOVE to give it a try.
My biggest frustration is many many of my photos are on kodak east share software, but Kodak is no longer online so I don’t know how to print them! Other than that I have never made baby books for my littles, would love help narrowing down best pics!!