Needed: Retouching services for Pro Digital Portrait Photographer

photomo · #1 03-16-2005, 09:14 AM

I am a digital professional portrait/enviromental photographer and am in need of regular retouching services at a competitive price. I am currently paying $6.00 per image which includes basic retouching services: sharpening, whitening teeth and eyes, evening out skin tones, color balancing, lighting adjustments, etc. More extensive work is priced by the complexity of the job. I would like to have all images retouched before they go to the lab. Work flows in cycles, however I currently have 10 jobs with an average of 6-10 images each that need to be retouched asap. My current retoucher is great, just has challenges meeting deadlines, based on my work flow. Need a consistent turn around time of approximately one week. Could send up to 30 images per client at a time, however, normal clients orders include 6-10 images. Need the ability to easily FTP images up and ongoing communication regarding images to maximize my client's satisfaction.

Thanks for your repsonse.

lens2art · #2 03-16-2005, 06:35 PM

I have sent you a private message. You may wish to check for it next time you log in.

Kind regards.

Jeru · #3 03-19-2005, 01:56 AM

Please see my samples in my gallery:
http://www.retouchpro.com/gallery/sh...sort/1/cat/500
and I can send you high rez version by email.

If you are interested, please contact me:
jeru@263.net.cn

pixelfinity · #4 03-21-2005, 07:12 PM

Please let me know if you are interested in working with me.

Cheers
Ian

Dinagaran · #5 07-01-2005, 06:55 AM

This is dinagaran photo retoucher & designer. I Have 5 years experience in photo retouching service. I am interested to work with U.

Sreegopi@dishnetdsl.net

grafx · #6 07-01-2005, 07:31 AM

$6 per pic is rather low for rates folks. Average in your time and see if it is worthwhile for you. If you figure each pic takes 15 minutes you're only averaging $24/hr. Then if you file taxes....you get the point.

Kraellin · #7 07-01-2005, 02:16 PM

i tend to agree with graphx. if you were in house, that might be different, but as a freelance, private contractor, the overhead is much greater... taxes, social security, office space, supplies, etc, etc.

Craig

PatrickB · #8 07-01-2005, 02:50 PM

Anything depends on speed guys

grafx · #9 07-01-2005, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatrickB

Anything depends on speed guys

15 min is pretty fair per pic figuring download/processing/upload times...LOL!

Kraellin · #10 07-02-2005, 07:42 AM

now, if you could do batch processing, this might work.

Craig

moofactory · #11 07-09-2005, 02:44 PM

yeah mate you undercharge yourself way too much.

check this out:

Please download an image test I did recently on the following links:

Quick retouch for proof
http://nowandalways.com.au/retouchpr...touchquick.jpg

This was a sharpen, levels, colour and contrast along with some minor quick retouching under the eyes. Everything elce was left as is.

Because im not sure what the true tone of that backdrop is it was difficult to get the correct colour of the overall image. so the background could be more of a grey nutural or could be a little more red. this affected what her true skin tone possibly is.

Below is the origional as reference in the same dimentions as the one above.
http://nowandalways.com.au/retouchpr...4origional.jpg

Full retouch
http://nowandalways.com.au/retouchpr...etouchfull.jpg

This was a joy to work on, I really love retouching.
The most time consuming thing about this one in particular was retouching all the strey hairs. Which could use some more attention even still.

The skin and wrinkles were an obvious thing to work on, after I did under the eyes at first I droped it back just a little to keep it still looking natural.

Her finger nails were awfull, they look as though her nail polish had been taken off recently, so I worked on the skin around her finger nails to clean them up a little.

I went around and fixed all the pilling on her jumper if youll notice the little bits of fluff around the edges of her arm and her chest.

Her eye colour has been increased slightly along with her lips and hair. Her hair my be less ginger in the blond than that though, I may have gone just a little to far with the hair colour but does really bring out the viberentcy of the overall image, her origional hair was very lifeless.

finally I did a slight darken in opposite corners of the image in the top left and bottom right to give the overall image some depth and to draw your eye to the center which is just something I personally like.

How much would you expect to charge for this?

Me I work at $50 pr hr standard as a designer. This took me about 4 hrs.
But if it wasnt for that hair Id say it would only take 2.

Individual images are expected to be a decent cost.
You get like 10 to 20 images to do though, and well of course your gona drop the cost per image. Me I would charge $50 - $80 each image for 10+
Keep in mind people thats Australian. its around 30% cheaper in u.s dollars.

PatrickB · #12 07-09-2005, 06:01 PM

You are really some kind of funny

My last shooting was resulting in an amount of 80 pictures, so just a quick calculation:

It took Moo two hours to retouch his image. Will that mean he needs 160 hours, one whole month based on 8 hours a day, five days a week to do the job? Will that mean I'd better charge the studio 8k bucks for the job?

I did in around four hours, charged 150 Euros, had some good income and a satisfied future customer.

As I said, speed's the word...

Photoshop: The post was from a professional photographer, that means we are not talking about some podunk pictures of last years prom, but about pro-images.

Vikki · #13 07-10-2005, 06:28 AM

At one time, I used to retouch hundreds of images a day, every day, for months. All images had to be checked and corrected for color, stray hairs, acne spots, under eye shadows, moire, lint, miscellaneous debri caught in shot, strings, tags, dirt, drool, dirty fingernails, etc. Each image took from 2 minutes to 5 minutes. This was not a rush job, it was a natural workflow. Now, if my math is correct, $6 for 5 minutes, works out to over $60 an hour. Not too bad. Keep in mind though, that the images I worked on were much better to begin with than the image shown in the example (the key to a fast workflow).
The problem, as I see it, is that retouchers need to have the experience to work at a rate that is profitable to themselves and the employer. If each image took 4 hours, everyone would go out of business. It goes back to what I've said in other threads, you can't charge for your lack of experience or ability. If an unexperieced mechanic took 4 hours to install a new battery in your car, you'd be outraged if you had to pay for that labor. This isn't much different.

Photo678 · #14 07-12-2005, 01:12 PM

Thank you vikki.

This bulk work is the sort of work I do as well, and you find ways to speed up your workflow.

These arent high end fashion images, these are simple portraits that need to be cleaned up a bit. I did a bit of work for this guy, and it worked out just fine.

Initial set was 20 images, quick retouch of all took me a little over an hour and a half. Do the math.

rajibindia · #15 07-14-2005, 12:19 PM

sir,

i want a scope to work with you. give me your email address i will send my work to you, please mail me in this mail id:
rajibcreation@rediffmail.com
restoration_project2005@yahoo.co.in