If you commit to something as important as making permanent changes to your body, getting a quality preview will help your decision.
In the aesthetic business, image editing has become an indispensable tool for showcasing potential results, educating patients, and establishing a strong client relationship. This article aims to provide a detailed guide on how to efficiently use image editing in the aesthetic industry. By leveraging image editing techniques, aesthetic clinics can benefit from improved business outcomes, enhanced safety measures, and strengthened connections with their clients.
Capturing a picture for Before/After Images
Before diving into the image editing process, it is crucial to capture high-quality before and after images. The following points should be considered:
- Quality: Editing image demands high-quality raw material with limited color distortion and a good level of contrast. Starting from an “amateur” picture with unwanted artifacts on it can have a devastating effect on the final result and create anxiety instead of a feeling of security.
- Consistency: Maintain consistent lighting, angle, and background to ensure accurate and comparable results. If you are going to use previous before/after images as examples, the new one you will make needs to be comparable. It is recommended to take not of your exact setup so you can reproduce it (light placement and intensity, camera settings, etc.)
- Permission: Obtain consent from patients before capturing and editing their images to comply with privacy regulations and foster trust. Your Patient Record System should include such an essential feature. If it doesn’t, take a look at Meridiq features.
- Privacy: Make sure you store these pictures in a secured system, as this becomes private medical material.
Selecting an Image Editing Software
Choosing the right image editing software is essential for achieving desired results efficiently. There are a number of editing apps out there that are made for social media purposes to post “fun” content, make sure you pick an app that is suitable for professional use, considering the following factors:
- Functionality: If you have experience with image editing, you can opt for advanced software that offers a wide range of editing tools, such as cropping, retouching, color correction, image enhancement, etc. However, if you’re not familiar with editing or if you simply don’t have time to spare for this, your need a specialized app that will create automatically a custom before/after effect for you with professional rendering. Check Meridiq Before/After image tool here.
- User-Friendliness: Again, depending on your familiarity with design tools, select an intuitive software that allows easy navigation and quick editing to save time and effort. You can easily sink dozens of hours in a non-specialized or too complex app.
- Compatibility: Ensure compatibility with the file formats commonly used in the aesthetic industry, that you will be able to easily send to patients, and more importantly that are compatible with your Patient Record System as we recommend to store these images there.
Avoid unrealistic outcome and overly smoothened pictures:
Before/After image app features
The whole idea of the app is to give your patient a preview of the result of an intervention, but you don’t want to overdo it and turn you “after image” into an unrealistic Instagram filter.
Here is what you should expect from your app
Retouching: Remove blemishes, scars, and other imperfections to present a polished and professional image. However, this should be done to a realistic extent, presenting a “real-world” face as the output.
Implement intervention desired outcome: Depending on the intervention (filling, lifting, scar removal, etc.), you want the app to be able to target a specific area and apply a realistic change in this zone, that clearly corresponds to the planned intervention.
Sharpening and Clarity: Apply sharpening and clarity adjustments to highlight details and provide a clear representation of the results.
More business Business Benefits than you might think
Efficient utilization of image editing can bring numerous benefits to aesthetic clinics:
- Increased Conversion: High-quality images can help prospective clients visualize the potential outcomes, increasing the likelihood of conversion, especially for your new clients. Obviously, real before-after images of previous patients also help, but nothing will replace seeing her own face transformation for a patient in doubt..
- Patient Education: Use edited images to educate patients about various procedures, potential risks, and post-treatment expectations, promoting informed decision-making. If you don’t expect a perfect result on a scar reconstruction, it is also important to manage your client’s expectations and present a realistic expected outcome.
- Building Trust: Presenting consistent and trustworthy results through image editing establishes credibility and fosters trust with clients. If you manage to establish a clear validity of your Before/After process based on previous clients, you will earn more trust.
- Marketing and Advertising: Professionally edited before/after images can be used for marketing campaigns, social media, and websites to attract potential clients.
Ensuring Safety and Transparency
While image editing can never be perfectly accurate, it is still a reference people will come back to when evaluating the results of an intervention. It is a potential risk if you have been overly optimistic, but you should also consider this as insurance if you have managed to get a realistic preview. Some precautions you need to take when using Before/After pictures:
Disclosure: Clearly communicate to patients that edited images are simulations and that individual results may vary.
Realistic Expectations: Educate patients about the limitations of image editing, ensuring they have realistic expectations of the outcomes (if possible based on previous cases).
Ethical Standards: Adhere to ethical guidelines set by professional organizations to maintain integrity and trust in the aesthetic industry.
Strengthening Client Relationships
Image editing can be used as a powerful tool to strengthen the bond between aesthetic clinics and their clients. It is a good way to maintain communication in the decision process and keep the dialogue active and open. Once you’ve proved yourself and established a degree of credibility for your Before/After image process, this will help you to get more returning clients. Some ideas to nurture this relationship:
Customization: Offer clients the opportunity to influence the end results through personalized before/after images, creating a personalized experience.
Interactive Consultations: Go back to this Before/After image during consultations to facilitate discussions, answer questions, and address concerns effectively.
Long-Term Engagement: Continuously update and share edited images with clients to showcase the success stories of previous patients, inspiring trust and loyalty.
Efficient utilization of image editing in the aesthetic business provides strong benefits, ranging from improved business outcomes to enhanced client relationships. Be sure to pick a tool that is integrated with your patient record system for both practical and safety reasons, and this will boost your aesthetic business activity.