Outsourcing Retouching Services To India?

[Brockery]

I also recommend using a service in your own country, with the language issue being significant. As I say, "Never underestimate the difficulty of transferring a concept intact from one human mind to another." This would be especially true regarding aesthetic concepts.
And I also believe in supporting the homeboy whenever possible.
I'm puzzled, though, about all this discussion of shipping discs to get a digital image file from place to place.

[ftp-Jeff]

Wow....

As a retoucher in London UK since 1972. I have seen a lot of changes.

A few years ago, a young Indian girl walked into our London studio. She had parked her brand new SL500 in our car park. She told us how her company could help us cut our costs. Basically we should pass on our retouching we get from the top London agencies to her. She would get it done a lot cheaper, and we would make more profit, and could cut our staff.

We gave her an image.... When we looked at the job that her Hi end retoucher had done, we literally pissed ourselves laughing! We then sent out the same image to 50 retouchers around the world. Well they called themselves retouchers. We spent another afternoon going over the images that had been retouched. Oh we laughed again so much!!! There was only one person we would of used. Turned out she was just around the corner!

I would say for every 100 people that get in touch with me saying they are a high end creative retoucher, I am lucky if 1 of them is up to a decent standard. It is true! honestly.

A few months passed, and we met a photographer that knew the young Indian girls company who paid us a visit. And he had actually visited the company in India. He said it was sickening, nothing more than a sweatshop, where people worked in cramped crappy conditions for a few cents a day. Not driving around in nice new Mercedes!

Now, these Indian sweatshops and so called retouchers that charge a few dollars an image and turn out crap, have indeed pushed the hourly rate down. And it has hurt the high end retouchers.

I am pleased to say however, the large agencies are aware of this, and do not outsource to just anyone.... Yes they have in house retouchers, but funnily enough, when the big budget clients want good imaging done, they still turn to Creative High End retouching experts.

And yes, I know some of you bleat on about how much we charge... But, we do not work from our bedroom, we have the latest software and hardware, have in house drum scanners and certified proofing systems. And a whole host of other expensive outlays. All these need service contracts as well.

So, decent high end top dollar retouchers are a little like Hells Angels............ 1%ers.

You get what you pay for. And that is the same for the Indian sweatshops and a lot of the other so called retouchers.... Pay peanuts, get monkeys!

Some of you may feel I am being harsh, and wonder why I should say all this? And indeed some have questioned why I should charge the amount I charge for my retouching....

Well with 40 years in this game, countless awards, college qualifications in all sorts of print and photographic subjects, as well as traditional retouching and photocomposition skills and airbrush skills, I have earned the right. I HAVE PAID MY DUES! Have they? NO!

Sorry it turned into a bit of a rant... But as you can probably tell, retouching has been my life, and to see all the crap I see out there is rather upsetting.

Anyway, I now live in Canada, I work for UK, Canadian and US clients. And would never outsource to save money... My clients expect the best, and in return, they pay the best.

[frankxsi]

Adobe should Put better protection on there software and lets see what happens

[ftp-Jeff]

Originally Posted by nalli

This forum delivers nice messages to the public.

Are you a sweatshop owner or worker?

[aartist]

Looks to me like nalli has posted advertisement.

[ftp-Jeff]

What a surprise.... First post too!

[garnet01]

I always feel patriotic to the country I'm in, I knew some guys out of work in my home town, got them a wacom and trained them how to make paths for me. More expensive I'm sure than outsourcing but somehow I feel better for doing my bit for my town.

[restorati]

I run - or used to run (it's just sitting there doing nothing now as I don't have the time to manage it) a very successful photo restoration website. We'd get tens of applications a month from these so called restoration/retouch experts. Want to know how many I would have hired out of a few hundred that have applied over the years?

Maybe 1 or 2! And I'm not exaggerating.

Though they can call themselves whatever, the truth of the matter is that most so called experts are just getting started. Though I applaud their entrepreneurial spirit. I hold myself to much higher standards as that is what the clients expect.

If you are good at what you do I don't see why India, China, Philippines or another outsourced sweat photo-shop should bother you. You will still have plenty a work.

[Imagocentric]

I'm a freelance retoucher & photographer and have more and more often these days had to turn to online freelance sites looking for new clients. What I see there is as you say, there's a huge amount of work going out to India, the Philippines and other areas where living costs are extremely low compared to the west. There's a price war going on and it will, without doubt, lower costs globally. Sometimes the work they output is good, there's a lot of rubbish out there too though and hopefully clients will begin to see that if you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys, always.
In the meantime, the people who HAVE to take control are the freelancers themselves, Clients will almost always look to reduce costs, we have to educate them. Whatever happens, what freelancers in the west must not do, is try to compete on price. All this will do is accelerate the decline in prices globally, something which will never reverse. Clients will quickly come to expect that we will always reduce price in order to get the work and they'll push in that direction. Take pride in what you do, remember all the years of training, the cost of training and what your time is worth. Don't sell out. It'll be tough for a while but better that then tough forever.

Mike