PhotoWonder

[Cameraken]

Vikki.

I do take your point. I just downloaded the before and after of the girl and had a go at it. The crack down the centre has ‘stretched’ the mouth and I had to move the two halves and re-align. Her left side of the mouth is a little low in their restoration.
I also believe you are correct that they have flipped the eye and nose and this will have lost the original character.

However. The rest is very well done. Not one single visible clone mark. The shadow on the neck has been lightened. The eyebrows have been replaced and there is not one single blemish in the restoration. (one tiny crack missed in her hair on her right shoulder)

I think this is quite a remarkable restoration if this was done in 30 minutes.

Thanks for mentioning the Walgreen thread. I had not seen that
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/salon/7480-walgreens-photo-restoration.html
They did a really poor job on Restoration Challenge #44


Aceman. It is reassuring to hear that the picture of ‘the boy’ is not possible. However they are using this picture in the trade mag ads. How much damage is this doing? Not just to themselves but to retouching in general. If the public see this and assume it is possible then this is what they will come to expect and they will be disappointed with anything less. Whoever retouches it.

We have another ex photowonder employee.
http://www.retouchpro.com/challenges...php/photo/5824
and, especially well done.
http://www.retouchpro.com/challenges...php/photo/5823


Ken.

[chrishoggy]

So, it seems my gut feeling was telling me the truth
Thoughts of slave labour in other countries may not be far off either, seen as they have dumped good employees to cut costs. As for the boy, well I didn't like to say detouched, but thats exactly what I was thinking.
Realistic expectations is something I enforce right from the get go. My customers get a realistic view of what to expect at the end of a job. Making yourself look too good, will only cause problems and complaints. I tend to under-estimate what the finished image will look like, then they get more than they expected

Personally I doubt they will have much luck in the UK, and I would offer my opinion to anybody who asked about them.

Buy cheap, buy twice. Thats what I like to say when someone claims they can get a job done cheaper elsewhere.

[Vikki]

Ken, hopefully I'm not harping on this too much, and not directing my posting specifically to you.....
Good cloning is not an indication of a good restoration. Cloning, and other techniques are parts of restoration work that make up the whole. If one of those parts is not done well, the whole does not work. To be dramatic....if you gave them a torn photograph of yourself, and they did an amazing job of pasting and cloning your right eye to repair your left, wouldn't it bother you that you now appeared slightly crosseyed? Would you want that image representing you in your heritage albums?

I may be overly critical, but we're discussing a company specializing in this work, not hobbyist. It pains me to have the general public think that this is as good as it gets.

OK, off the soapbox...

[Cameraken]

Vikki.

Thank You. I agree with you 100% and it is the whole reason why ‘smaller’ restorers could always do a better job than a mass produced product.

I was not disagreeing with you. I was just trying to make the point that they did an excellent job in 30 minutes. We would not have stopped there and would have made much more of an effort to keep the character of the subject, and that can take much longer.

The problem, I think, is in showing restorations such as ‘blue boy’ which will raise customer’s expectations to an unrealistic level.

I also totally agree with Chris. I would never tell a customer their restoration will be perfect when I know it will not be. However there are people out there who would tell them different and that is why they ‘buy twice’
Unfortunately some do not ‘buy twice’ they accept a product and then call us expensive.

But I do think Ninety9 did a good job on the challenges. And I would love to hear a technique where I could get to that point in a restoration in 30mins.
I am currently working on challenge 86 and I do not consider myself slow. But I have already spent far longer than 30 minutes on it.

Ken.

[byRo]

I have been following this thread with great interest - especially as I am a "questioner" by nature.

One thought that occurred to me...

I remember when I was taking a course for implementation and auditing of the ISO 9000 quality system. The instructor asked what we should aim for. Many replied "Perfection!!" - which is the wrong answer.
Perfection is very costly, sometimes practically unobtainable.
What would should aim for is to attend perfectly the customer's expectations.

In our case, we could do a 95% perect restoration job in 30 minutes and a 99% job in 2 hours.
Here, in an ambient of professional retouchers (nitpickers ), the 4% difference may be clear.
But what about the client? It is highly improbable that they will notice any difference at all. So didn't we just waste (or overcharge) one and a half hours?

Here at RetouchPRO we see woeful tales of starving retouchers, while these guys are dominating New Zealand, Australia (tomorrow the world).

Are they wrong?

Rô

[Frank Lopes]

Aceman, you bring up a good point...

I wonder how selective they are regarding the work they accept?
I wonder how much they refuse to tackle since they know they will 'lose their shirt" due to severity of the original?

I can, just as they do, have one price for every single job I do. This means that I'll look carefully at each image that is brought to me and judge it along the lines of: is it worth my time to work on this image so I can make, say, $50?

And if the volume of images to restore is high enough, than I can afford to be selective.... VERY selective....

Originally Posted by aceman

I see 30 mins beign mentioned a lot, this is probably my fault. Artists had to do on average 15 photos a day. Because it was one price fits all, a lot of the work was of a difficult nature. 30 mins was about what people would aim for for the majority of their images. Some of course would take a lot less time, and some would take a while longer.
....
I dont want to take anythign away from the artists who work there though, as even though it was a quick cheap job, I havent seen too many, if any,
" professional " places do any better work then photopages could, in fact a lot of the quality in the industry really is laughable.

[aceman]

Yeah im not sure what happens now. But we used to turn away a lot of images.

Anyways im raving a bit.

Ninety9 will know a lot more about how things work at photowonder these days.

[Frank Lopes]

That's got to be the answer why they charge the same regardless of the image and at the same time expect every image to be done in "30 minutes"

Originally Posted by aceman

...
we used to turn away a lot of images.
...

[aceman]

Anyways ive said my piece time to move on.

[chrishoggy]

I would like to correct their learn more page, where it talks about other retouchers/restorers. They rubbish stand alone/small business restorers, with trash. So this is how I feel the Current Model section should read:

Price Structure
Requires a custom quote that will vary based on the level of work. That way you only pay for the work you require.

Lead Time
Dependable and short lead time of between 3-5 working days.

Process
Complex, precise and tailored to the customers needs

Quality
High quality workmanship gained through years of experience and 1 to 1 communication with customer needs

Capacity
Bulk orders are welcome, and we have retouchers ready to meet the demands of large orders.

Capability
Will work on any image, no matter how difficult. With a realistic expectation of what the finished product will look like.

[Squggle]

I agree with some of the people here regarding the de-touched boy on the front page... definatley too good to be true.

As a photographer, I love the grunge effect and it looks like a simple desat and wall texture overlay to me... very dodgy.

[Littlecoo]

The thought of entrusting 'precious memories' to what I see as an impersonal, production-line type setup is a contradiction that sends me cold.