I'm retouching for editorial photographers who shoot celebrities, politicians, and CEO's for magazines like Time and Fortune. I'm billing $75 per hour. That's here in NYC. The budget usually only covers a few hours. What about you guys? Some exact numbers would be beneficial for everyone I think. Perhaps you could list the rate for hour and typical budget allowed for one image, and your specific industry, ie advertising, editorial, weddings.

I'm in a very rural area of Florida so the market demands lower prices. I charge $40 per hour, minimum 1 hour. With each draft, I submit a statement of current charges. My services include logo creation (or cleanup), camera ready art for specialty items, prepress design, layout, scanning, color correction etc. I bill all of this separately from production costs for printing, but I do mark up my printing costs on things like brochures, posters, postcards etc. about 40%.

I charge per image and I am also in NYC. I don't like charging per hour because Im not one to keep my eye on the clock, and I tend to multi-task all the time.
I deal primarily with semi-pro/pro photographers, not agencies.
I really dont have a set price because every image is different. It tends to range between $20-$35 for editorial. Beauty, I always charge a lot more.

Thanks, wish we could have a few more responses.

Thanks, wish we could have a few more responses.

I'm a hobbyist :) Although the thought is there to start doing it at a higher level.

I deal with the general public. I have found here in Oz that art and craft (?) can command a low price or a ridiculously high price. There seems to be no medium level. Some restorers here are charging a minimum $A45.00 no matter what condition your image is in. I guess what they pick up on the merry-go-round they lose on the razzle-dazzle (Oz slang). If you say, I charge this much per hour, the customer says how many hours? So I work on the idea of minimum, medium, maximum restoration/reproduction and have a flyer to outline what those categories entail. It starts at $A25 minimum and goes upwards from there depending on the image. This usually involves a detailed (with loupe) discussion over the counter so that people can really see for themselves the damage to a photo. The worst part is, as restorers, sticking to the clients brief!! Gee, but don't I hate not doing a perfect job because of $'s.

It's kinda stupid if i postet what a regular charge pr hour would be for me, with the different currency and stuff.

But if you go after the bigmac index. I woulds say 75 dollars an hour for editorial work sound to be a regular price.
Ofc commercial would be a lot higher.

My rate is about 113 us dollars an hour now, but the dollar is very low now.

I charge on the job.
You need to be able to charge for all the experince you have.
So a tough job that not many people can do can be charged at a higher rate than and easy job.

Interesting to see different rates across cultures (this is an international site or maybe I'm wrong and it's parochial?) and good that we're tolerant about other people's postings. I actually find it interesting to see what's happening around the world in what is a skill acquired that can be accessed globally by consumers if they are on the net. Never would have thought the concept stupid.

Well, I've only just started learning how to retouch and not very experienced yet. The work I've done so far (for some magazines and a photographer) I've charged about 35 euro's an hour for. That's about 50$.

For studio work, layouts/design, which I've been doing for quite a while now I think my company charges 120 euro's an hour, less for some companies though. That's about 170$. For one print-ready ad we charge a minimal of 4 hours. Obviously when it's just an adapt we only charge 30 mins for those.

The most money we charge if for doing guidelines. Just did some for Glenfiddich and a new styleguide for Sony, which cost them basically a shedload of money :P