We investigate high-energy photon production from $2\leftrightarrow 2$ processes in a quark-gluon plasma by evaluating the imaginary part of the two-loop photon self-energies in thermal QCD. Working in the imaginary-time formalism, we derive analytical expressions for the leading-logarithmic and beyond-leading-logarithmic contributions to the photon production rate from $2\leftrightarrow 2$ processes. We retain the full Fermi–Dirac and Bose–Einstein statistical factors and compare the resulting Compton and annihilation rates with those obtained from kinetic theory and the closed-time-path formalism. The summed rates agree with the corresponding established results, providing a nontrivial consistency check of the calculation. Furthermore, when we consider the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for incoming particles, we find that quantum corrections are absent in the individual $2\leftrightarrow 2$ processes. However, the total rate agrees with that of full statistics.