The security questions your editing partner should welcome

When you outsource editing, you're handing over more than pixels. Listing photos can reveal a seller's belongings, family photos on the walls, sometimes documents on a desk. Agents are contractually careful about this, which means you need to be too. The good news: separating trustworthy partners from risky ones takes about five questions.

1. How do files travel?

The transfer layer is usually fine by default; Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer and modern FTP all encrypt files in transit. The question worth asking is what happens after download: do files sit on individual editors' personal machines, or on access-controlled studio systems? "Whatever the editor uses at home" is the wrong answer.

2. Who can see my files?

A serious studio can tell you exactly who touches a project: the assigned editors and the QA reviewer, nobody else. Vagueness here usually means files circulate freely, including, in the worst cases, to subcontractors you've never heard of. Ask directly whether work is ever subcontracted out.

3. Will my work show up in your portfolio?

This one stings photographers regularly: their client's listing appears in an editing company's marketing gallery, and the agent sees it. The standard you want is written permission before any reuse, no exceptions. It's also worth checking that your images won't be used to train editing automation without consent, an increasingly relevant question.

4. Will you sign my NDA?

Any established studio serving agencies and brokerages treats NDAs as routine paperwork. Hesitation is a red flag, not a negotiating position. If you don't have your own NDA, a partner who offers theirs is showing you they've dealt with professional clients before.

5. When do files get deleted?

Files shouldn't live on an editor's systems forever by default. The right answer is a retention schedule you control: keep source files for 30 days for corrections, then remove, or whatever fits your client agreements. "We keep everything indefinitely" should be a choice you make, not a policy you discover.

The pattern behind the answers

Notice what these questions have in common: none require technical expertise to evaluate. You're listening for specificity. Partners with real processes answer in concrete detail because the process exists; partners without them retreat to reassuring adjectives. Trust the specificity, not the adjectives.

Our own answers are written out plainly on the how it works page: encrypted transfer, access-controlled systems, no reuse without written permission, NDAs as standard, deletion on your schedule. Ask us the hard versions of any of them at the contact page; the questions cost nothing and tell you everything.