Do most photographers do their own retouching or do they have a someone else (in their own department) do it?

Do most photographers do their own retouching or do they have a someone else (in their own department) do it?

I have found it to be about 50/50 all of my clients are photographers that just simply either dont have time or knowledge to do their own retouching, yet most of the cold calls i have made have shown me that many are doing their own

If you are refering to portrait photographers, more and more are doing their own retouching for a couple of reasons, usually it can be controlled better and it is becoming the next step in the creative process.

Depending on the size of the studio, you may find that they have a person who does all of it, or the photographer themselves may do it.


Mike

From what I can tell, many of the big photographers who deal in large volumes of photos outsource-- and want it outsourced CHEAPLY.

Some want work done for as low as $1/photo, they will not pay much more than that, but they will always find someone to do it.

The most I would do for $1/photo is very basic airbrushing-- and then they better be offering at least a volume of 500 photos.

I was refering to the type of portrait studio that has maybe 1 to 3 photographers, and is an independent operation. The vast majority of those that I know that meet this description would not be looking for anykind of retouching that meets the $1/image criteria. Their main marketing effort is to be known for the quaility of their images.

Roob, can you describe what you mean by "big photographers"? It sounds to me like you are describing the chains that do underclass kids stuff. There are a couple of them around here and they do look for cheap and are not too concerned about quaility. They do such a mass amount that if someone complians, they just refund and move on.

Mike

Well, by big photographers I mean the ones who make a really luxurious living from their photography-- and they deal in volume, hundreds of images per photoshoot, thousands of pictures for processing for publication and layouts for modelling websites.

Even though they make a fortune in photography, they can't afford to spend twice the fortune to have 100s of photos per shoot retouched at typical rates-- so they find retouchers willing to work for $1/photo, and I know there are those who do.

And I know there are good retouchers who work for those rates too.

C'mon! A dollar per photo?! Even with volume, that's an impossible compensation. Unless all you are doing is running actions. But then the photographer can do that himself.

$1/photo? ok , i understnd they work w/ volume, but for $1 I think the only thing they do is probably levels/cuves adjustment and mabe a slight softening of skin, and maybe vignettes.
Mike>>>>Its aslo likely that these 'luxurious' photographers take such good pictures that they dont need a whole lotta adjustments. Maybe??!!?!?! :confused:

"really luxurious living" OK, I give up, anyone want to define that for me?


I'm not so sure that one would have "100s of photos per shoot retouched".

If I have a high school senior in for a portrait session, we might shoot say a hundred or so images, but we immediately start narrowing it down to may be 10 or less, then only those get retouched.

I do not know anyone, portrait or commercial, that retouches every image from a shoot. Even the wedding folks who might do a 1K images or so on a wedding don't do that. It takes too long and is to expensive....

Trying to get it right so that you do not need to retouch is really the key, but most of us can always use a little help now and then :)

Mike

Glamour photographers can and do reach that kind of volume, often.

The high enders can take anywhere from 8,000 - 20,000 pictures per month, they'll knock that down to about 2000 - 3000 photos, and then knock that further down to 50-200 photographs per set for publishing on website galleries-- generally, all of which, are at the very least airbrushed.

If you need airbrushing for 50 photos per set for gallery publishing, and say, have several sets of the same subject-- even at 5 sets, that's 250 photos.
(and 50 photos per set is a very low number for a set, as is 5 sets)

250 photos for one subject, and these photographers may do several subjects in the run of a month and may very well need over 2000 photos retouched.

And even though high end glamour photographers make an exceptional living from photography-- they're not going to be paying out top dollar to retouch that volume, they're going to hit up someone who can and will do it for a couple of dollars per photograph.

That's crazy. Their name is involved and they will trust their reputation to the lowest bidder?

I do a ton of retouching for the major auto manufacturers (Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Jaguar, and Subaru). I do hundreds of photos per year for each manufacturer. I also do hundreds of images for a major window treatment manufacturer (I'm up to about 1800 images) and an oil company. I won't tell you what I charge, but it's way more than $1.00 per photo.

If I had to do 1800 photos and only make $1800.00, I'd be better off flipping burgers. Anybody who only wants to work for $1.00/photo for retouching deserves what they get.

But that depends on where you live.

$1800 US in some places is good money-- for where I live, that's easily double the amount of the average family income for a month.

The lowest offer I have personally been given is $2/photo (I didn't take it, btw), which to me, isn't that bad if the client only wants very basic color adjustments or quick, one-pass airbrushing or skin smoothing, but for anything more than that..... I wouldn't have anything to do with it.

That's not to say, someone else wouldn't. There are plenty of amateurs in the world who are pretty darn good with Photoshop, have little else to do, and would jump at the chance to make $1800.

RooB, you are going to have to give some real examples to convince us the costs you are quoting are realistic. We've already established in other threads that you are prepared to work for non-professional rates.

$1800 US in some places is good money-- for where I live, that's easily double the amount of the average family income for a month.

It took me a period of about 3 years to work on those particular 1800 images. I suppose if I did them back-to-back I could possibly have gotten it done in a month (without sleep).

If people are willing to hire amatuers at $1.00/image, well you know what they say... you get what you paid for.

Back to the topic at hand. I've only worked for one photographer directly and he only does minor retouching as he wants to spend most of his time behind the camera. I also worked breifly with a highly-paid automobile photographer and he was clueless about retouching. I definitely think there is work available through photographers, but for me I have found most of my success with creative companies who purchase photography but need it edited.

Personally, I would like to become a professional photographer myself and do all my own retouching. It's very fulfilling.

RooB, you are going to have to give some real examples to convince us the costs you are quoting are realistic.

Consider this for a moment.

Again, during a work day, a high-end glamour photographer will take several thousand pictures-- the photographer will narrow the photos down to a few hundred photos as the best of the lot for his sets. The photographer will sell those sets to content providers for anywhere from $500 - $5,000 depending on the number of photos (and name of the model) he has taken. But before he sells those photo sets to content providers (who buy the photos for a few dollars each), they need to be retouched or they won't sell at all. So, even though the photographer is making a hefty profit on his photography, he still can't afford to pay "professional" rates, because if he does he's going from making a mint to making a pint (or even going broke) just in retouching fees. And even from the start, almost half of his profit will eaten through travel expenses and paying the model(s) for their time.

So, if he's dealing with 100s of photos to sell on every work day (he may do 4-5 shoots every week) which sell for $4-$5 per photo to various content providers-- how, exactly, is he going to afford to pay more than $1 or $2 per photo without losing his profits?

By the way, when I say glamour photographer-- I don't mean fashion photographers who publish maybe a dozen pictures at a time in a magazine or hired for a specific job-- I mean glamour photographers, who are responsible for the content of modelling sets designated for website publication where 100s of photos are published at a time.

We've already established in other threads that you are prepared to work for non-professional rates.
That's only because I'm not high end, and I refuse to work with commercial industries-- and I do turn down jobs that I consider have unprofessional rates for my area. :grin:

I have a studio and we do our own retouching and printing. I also belong to the local pro photo group and I would guess from talking to the other photographers that the 50/50 guess is about right I think in most cases it has less to do with the business model and more to do with the personality of the photographer.

Guys, all this makes for a long discussion - but doesn't go anywhere at all!

[see "Rant" (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11912)]

Retouching can be whole lot of different things, can take from 2 minutes up to 4 hours (or more). That's a factor of 120, and you try and compare the prices as if all retouching was equal?

RooB has already said in other threads that he does not have heavy overheads and lives in an area where the cost of living is lower. The US$1800 figure might be OK for RooB (Canada), for me (Brazil) it would be real good money.

Here's my logic....
Good retouchers can be found all over the world*.
+ Clocks run at the same rate all around the world.
+ Internet has completely done away with distance as a factor.
+ The buying power of a buck is very different around the world.
= Lots of very happy third-world retouchers.

Rô
* OK, maybe I'll concede the high-end NYC guys - but only maybe

Guys, all this makes for a long discussion - but doesn't go anywhere at all!
Too true, byRo, as you say, there's so many conditions, factors, and variables it is impossible to come to any sort of agreement or understanding, not to mention that there are many different types of retouching jobs, and they don't all have the same professional pay scale.

Further my education please. Are there many retouchers getting work straight from the Internet? All of my work comes from face-to-face meetings with clients. Sure, after a while, they will send me work via the Internet, but I don't have any clients that are outside of my grazing range.

Can you really make a living having never met the client? Or are these only onesy-twosy type jobs?

emarts,

What I mean is that the photographer can send the images to the retoucher, via Internet, in any part of the world.

Higher end stuff would be difficult, but at the low end there's no problem.

See the classifieds. There are a few invites there for this type of work.

Rô

I don`t know if this is still of interest. But i wouldnt even step out of the door of my appartment for one dollar a picture. I really don`t know where you all live but in Paris I would be sleeping under bridge by now.
The average rate for retouching for Fashion / Lifestyle photography starts at 100 Euros/ hour and goes up to 500 Euros/ hour in Paris.
Obviously this market is very competive but it is still a market what isnt saturated. The best example is a friend of mine he worked as a hairdresser until 2 years ago and then started to get in to fashion retouching. He is now making so much money you wouldnt believe it if I will tell you.
What I want to say is that you shouldnt sell out on any means to be a retoucher. There are also otherways to make your living.

Anyways thats my bit to the topic.

Best

I do all my own retouching and I learn along the way. I'm always on the look out to get better. Photoshop is an amazing tool and I say I use 3% (so what, i'm shooting high) of all it entails. I'd love to bring on someone that could edit the chosen images from my shoots, but often wonder how likely is it. That being said, I don't ever want to give up learning and putzing around with photoshop.

I don't agree with Ro, I'm in a different country and I can provide a high end image via Internet, I'm a photographer and graphic designer and I know that each photographer can't do their own retouch, so I provide this service and they can upload and download their work and my retouches with a FTP server. And talking about the quality.... that's when the emails become important, with each mail I can comunicate with the clients so they'll know what I'm doing and what's happening with the image. Of course you can send a proof image first so the client see what have you done. Be sure they'll reply you with all the corrections.

Silvia.