Q: What is best practice?
A: Image editing and enhancement has always been part of the publisher’s production process. From the very first photos that were hand retouched directly on the printing plate, through the huge drum scanners of the 80s to today’s super efficient AI services that cut processing times from tens of minutes to mere seconds, the mission endures: to engage the reader and support the narrative visually with attention grabbing images.
Best practice in image editing and enhancement isn’t always about using the latest and flashiest tools, it’s about deploying the right mix of processes and toolsets for your particular situation; a combination of skilled photoshop operators and semi and fully automated enhancement software.
Yes, any imaging operation must combine speed, editorial integrity, and consistent visual identity. However, with each publisher having a multitude of imaging requirements, the consistent underlying processes need to be tweaked to ensure an efficient operation perfectly suited for print and pixel.
Images can be broadly divided into three distinct categories:
- Front cover / critical images: High-impact visuals that require expert manual editing (eg. royalty, politicians, celebrities).
- Publication images: Suitable for automation (toning, cut-outs) with minimal or no manual intervention.
- Online images: Optimised for higher saturation and brighter screens, web speed, format, responsiveness and SEO, typically requiring different enhancements.
Most publishers operate separate workflows for print and digital, and image processing should mirror this.
- Print workflows demand consistency and high quality. To maintain colour fidelity throughout the process, working in RGB is recommended, with images at 200—300dpi depending on paper stock.
- Online content requires lighter assets. Lower-resolution images (72dpi) — too high a resolution dramatically impacts web speeds and thus user experience and SEO scoring. Choosing the right format is also key: while JPEGs remain common, it suffers from visible image quality issues, formats like ‘.webp’ and ‘.png’ offer better clarity and compression, though adoption is still growing.
- Social media images, utilised for their immediacy and authenticity, are often low quality, grainy and blurred, and unsuitable for print. However, modern AI upscaling tools can now enhance these assets for broader use with impressive results.
These points are all very successfully addressed today with an imaging strategy that combines the knowledge and skill of human touch along with the power of automated image enhancement tools that integrate directly and, in most cases transparently, with the layout and content applications.
A well-defined imaging strategy helps publishers of all sizes maintain visual quality without overloading teams. By aligning tools and workflows to image needs across print and digital, imaging becomes not just a task, but a core part of editorial and digital strategy.
Q: What does outstanding performance look like?
A: Outstanding performance incorporates a sophisticated, single source of content, a CMS or DAM system (managing all images, their placement and delivery) that is integrated with image editing and enhancement tools that prep the images for the multiple styles, formats and sizes.
In practice, these tools are deployed in a more practical and necessitative approach. Dynamic changes to any publisher’s imaging requirements and workload for the skilled operators can be seamlessly alleviated with the utilisation of image automation tools.
For a major London based newspaper publisher, the recent VE Day celebrations showcased the remarkable capabilities a talented photoshop team can bring. An 80+ page special was created with hand-coloured photos from the war, each needing specific work including dust and scratch removal, recreating missing elements from damaged photos and colour matching uniforms and insignia colours — all in addition to the actual colourising.
Whilst the team were deployed on this project (amongst others) the vast majority of daily images were edited and enhanced using automated software for cropping, contrast, shadow tones, skin tones, cut outs and more and were virtually untouched by human hand, yet quality remained constant.
It’s a perfect example of the flexibility and capabilities of a solid imaging strategy. Shifting gears and resources easily when the workload demanded — with the support of powerful automation tools.
Three top tips
- Categorise images by editorial value. Not all images require the same treatment. Prioritise human expertise for high-impact visuals (eg. covers, exclusives), and deploy automation for the high-volume, lower-sensitivity content. This maximises both quality and efficiency.
- Use technology, but keep the human eye in control. Image automation tools can measurably increase efficiency, especially for toning, background removal and formatting. However, when it comes to nuance — emotional resonance, cultural sensitivity, or artistic tone — the human eye remains irreplaceable. Use automation as an assistant, not a director.
- Monitor performance and continuously tune your strategy. Track image processing time, output quality, team workload, and error rates. Imaging strategy isn’t “set-and-forget”; tweak it regularly to reflect changing content types, team structure, and audience platforms.
Derek and the other contributors took part in a ‘Content Creation Special – Q&A’ webinar on Tuesday, 17th June 2025. You can watch a recording of the webinar by registering here.
For over 25 years, Pixometry’s advanced image enhancement software has been powering the imaging workflows of publishers worldwide. Continuously evolving, our software now incorporates the latest AI imaging technologies to enhance and enrich images, perfect for engaging readers in print and digital media.
Email: derek.milne@pixometry.com
Web: www.pixometry.com
This article was included in the Content Creation Special, published by InPublishing in June 2025. Click here to see the other articles in this special feature.
