Barbie Austin wrote:
I would probably laugh out loud if I was offered $5 or less,

For $5 you probably get the super duper "portraiture" plug in
or the blur and high pass method.
Can't imagine doing a real retouch for anything close to that.

Peano wrote:
I don't mean this as bashing at all, but I think your question rests on a mistake. Asking what someone charges to "post-process a photo" is sort of like asking what a mechanic charges to "fix a car," or what a surgeon charges to "perform an operation."

except "per image" is pretty much how most retouchers advertise here on mm

Fun City Photo wrote:
It takes about half an hour just to get the picture into the computer.

You are exaggerating right.. 30 mins to get a picture into the computer, I am not following..does this means moving an image from the camera to the computer, from the CF or SD to the computer, uploading a 40 Mb image? Exactly what is this 30 mins?

It takes me between 20 mins to 1 hour to retouch one of my pictures. But some retouchers are blazing fast. Have you seen the threads about retouching an image? Some people do excellent retouch work and claim it took them 10 or 15 mins...

Rafael Telles wrote:
You are exaggerating right.. 30 mins to get a picture into the computer, I am not following..does this means moving an image from the camera to the computer, from the CF or SD to the computer, uploading a 40 Mb image? Exactly what is this 30 mins?

It takes me between 20 mins to 1 hour to retouch one of my pictures. But some retouchers are balzing fast. Have you seen the threads about retouching an image? Some people do excellent retouch work and claim it took them 10 or 15 mins...

I am not speaking about downloads but the time spent on negotiations using email and phone.
Others take 8 to 24 hours even with a pro model perfect makeup and a stylist and of course proper lighting and an excellent lens.

Phen Mas wrote:
Avg rate for an industry retoucher doing professional work is about 150-180/hr,(there are always exceptions)  However, you will find most of the work being contracted on MM is not for the same purpose of an industry retoucher is retouching for. Most retouchers on MM are retouching for personal projects etc. So that is why rates seem lower.

- Phen

Agreed :-)

Rafael Telles wrote:
Draw your own conclusions. I am almost afraid of opening my mouth and being bashed for putting this up

Averages are tricky things. If 99 people charge $10/image, and one charges $1000/image, the average is $19.90--twice what most people are charging, and a drop in the bucket for the other one.

But it's interesting to see the distribution, and the pie chart helps there--though if one of the $30+ was $100, $500, or more, that, too, would seriously skew your chart's segments.

Kevin_Connery wrote:

Averages are tricky things. If 99 people charge $10/image, and one charges $1000/image, the average is $19.90--twice what most people are charging, and a drop in the bucket for the other one.

But it's interesting to see the distribution, and the pie chart helps there--though if one of the $30+ was $100, $500, or more, that, too, would seriously skew your chart's segments.

Agreed Kevin... There were 2 retouchers in that thread that got out of the norm, I believe one was $150 and the other $200 per image.

netmodel wrote:
shouldnt it be rated as per hour, not per image?

Per image is more the norm here.

I started off trying to gauge by hour and pricing each individual image. Problematic with projections on packages of many images.

Found myself burning a lot of time simply evaluating and responding to estimates that may or may not ever come to fruition.

Also people seem more comfortable and apt to have work done if you can tell them exactly how much it will cost them to deliver what they wish. Then your either affordable or not.

A lot of professionals are here too, for myself, I work cheeper here, the work is more consistent and I get less gray hairs.

Well, got to head out to Tango *winks at Nat*

Ümar wrote:
Let me throw in what I saw on TV many years ago .... what it costs to retouch the front cover image of a magazine. At that time the show claimed that the Chicago firm that they interviewed and talked about charged 150K. Which included from air brushing to changing size of boobs, hips , shaving off thighs et al.

I think a professional complete retouchers are very expensive. I wish I can recal which channel and show that broadcast the story on retouching

150K may have been the budget for the whole marketing campaign that he was part of... now im late for tango... fashionably...

Rafael Telles wrote:
Agreed Kevin... There were 2 retouchers in that thread that got out of the norm, I believe one was $150 and the other $200 per image.

2????

What Thread did you READ? I read the one you linked and I saw in the first 5 pages a lot of ppl charging   $30-$40-$50-$60-$100-$150 PER HOUR of retouch.... (some that stated 2 hour MINIMAL per pic)

C'moon... really

Do u even know how statistics work?

x

PS: LMAO

Virtuoso Skins wrote:

Per image is more the norm here.

I started off trying to gauge by hour and pricing each individual image. Problematic with projections on packages of many images.

Even if say one image takes only a few minutes to clean up while one image may take an hour to clean up?!?! That's why I just think it seems to be proper to rate by hour because you have no way of assessing images and you clock the time it takes you to complete the tasks.

Natalia_Taffarel wrote:
Do u even know how statistics work?

PS: LMAO

Hmmm... I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer, then specialized in Aircraft Engineering, then worked for a few years as a programmer/web designer/project architect, now I am in IT management... sure I am not a Statistics guru, but I pretty much know how to get a simple pie chart like that in Excel (probably my 8th grader daughter can do it)... And for those wondering, I rounded to the lowest value in the table (hence if someone stated $75 then I added it in the $70 row), so when you read $70 (it is in reality $70 to $79.99).

PS: Ok Natalia... I think you now need to know what I meant in the other thread (just to clear things up between us before I get accused of racist or something else I am not). The reason I say Argentinian nuff said, was because I am from Uruguay and my wife is Argentinian.. and my dad always told me never to argue with an Argentinian woman cause I will always end up losing..(smart advise, hence I never argue with my wife cause she always wins..LOL)...Capiche   No hard feelings, right?

netmodel wrote:
Even if say one image takes only a few minutes to clean up while one image may take an hour to clean up?!?! That's why I just think it seems to be proper to rate by hour because you have no way of assessing images and you clock the time it takes you to complete the tasks.

In my humble opinion, charging by the hour is fair for the retoucher and charging by the image is fair to the person paying. Why? Think it this way: If you are a retoucher you know an easy pic might take you 20 to 40 mins to complete while a super hard image maybe even 2 hours, so paying what it actually took you to do the job is fair..On the other hand if you are the paying customer, why should you pay someone for a 2 hour work that some other retoucher (that charges the same rate and has the same quality) could have done in 40 mins...are you supposed to pay more cause a retoucher is slower than the other?

I am a slow retoucher I admit it, so I would be a bad retoucher (if that was my main job) cause my rates will be super high for work that is not worth what I would charge. Sometimes retouching one of my images takes me 2 hours (exaggerating, since my average is around the 35 mins mark), could I charge $120 for that image? Sure I could, would I pay myself that amount for my quality of work: No.

Skydancer wrote:
except "per image" is pretty much how most retouchers advertise here on mm

Nevertheless ...

If most housepainters charged a "per house" fee and I took up housepainting, I certainly wouldn't charge that way.

This is the beauty of a market economy. The "right" fee is the one that retoucher and client agree on.

Rafael Telles wrote:
I just added the cost per hour pie chart (only 37 retouchers charged this way in the thread).
No hard feelings, right?

She might call you now Che.

Rafael Telles wrote:
I just added the cost per hour pie chart (only 37 retouchers charged this way in the thread).

I'll re count (because I counted more in just 5 pages

Rafael Telles wrote:
  No hard feelings, right?

Glad u cleared that one up.

Now... u say 2 hours tops for a retouch.... and I don't agree

if u can find someone doing something like this in 2 hours, I'll take it all back

http://www.nataliataffarel.com/Catherine.html

And according to your own numbers, your first chart is wrong if 37 ppl charge 30or more per hour, calculating at least an hour per retouch u have 37 + 14 u inicially put 14 in that category (30 or more)

The colors on the first chart might vary

x

PS: I don't charge by the hour because I don't think it's fair to the person paying that I spend a lot of time on things they may or may not have asked for.

But my "per picture" is a lil bit higher than 13.5

Natalia_Taffarel wrote:
Now... u say 2 hours tops for a retouch.... and I don't agree

if u can find someone doing something like this in 2 hours, I'll take it all back

http://www.nataliataffarel.com/Catherine.html

And according to your own numbers, your first chart is wrong if 37 ppl charge 30or more per hour, calculating at least an hour per retouch u have 37 + 14 u inicially put 14 in that category (30 or more)

The colors on the first chart might vary

x

PS: I don't charge by the hour because I don't think it's fair to the person paying that I spend a lot of time on things they may or may not have asked for.

But my "per picture" is a lil bit higher than 13.5

Btw, the charts are for different things.. The first one is for people that charge per image the second one is for people that charge by the hour, two different populations. I could be wrong but not by much, I went thru the numbers quickly so there could most definitely contain mistakes, but it was mainly to give an overall view of the prices here on MM.

Each person is free to charge whatever they feel their time is worth and what they are happy with. Say for instance back in my university days if I could make $5/hour for editing images, hell I would be happy! Now, maybe $50/hour will be more in sync to what I value my time (after all I make $60+ per hour in a pretty relax job).  And that is just me.. Now imagine we put different people in different countries in perspective, Bill Gates would probably charge $50K per image (if not more) but a teenager will be super happy getting $5 per image.. get my drift? You charge relative to the market you are offering your services for and for what you value your money...

As for your image, I haven't seen the original, maybe if the MUA did a hell of a job, the model has porcelain perfect skin and the photographer nailed the lighting to perfection..then 2 hours sound like a lot of time for that image...on the other hand if the original out-of-camera picture looked like crap then 2 hours is phenomenal!

My 2 cents..

Rafael Telles wrote:
As for your image, I haven't seen the original, maybe if the MUA did a hell of a job, the model has porcelain perfect skin and the photographer nailed the lighting to perfection..then 2 hours sound like a lot of time for that image...on the other hand if the original out-of-camera picture looked like crap then 2 hours is phenomenal!

place the cursor over the image to see the original.

toan thai photography wrote:
place the cursor over the image to see the original.

Holy crap the skin healing alone would take me 2 hours..LOL.. If I shot that model and got that pic, it would go straight to the recycle bin, no way in hell I would put hours of work in making it look good. But my hat down to you Natalia, that is some crazy retouching, specially the hair work: beautiful! So how many hours did that image took you? 6, 8, 12? and more importantly how much would you charge the photographer for that kind of work? I can understand you putting a lot of hours in a pic like that to put in your portfolio, but realistically speaking do you do that kind of quality work for every single image you are paid to (be honest)?

Rafael Telles  wrote:
Bill Gates would probably charge $50K per image

…is Bill a retoucher as well? everyone seems to be now. Then again his images are probably WORTH $50,000 even though he's been doing it for 10 minutes. He's probably got "retoucher with 12 years industry experience" on his MM profile.

Snap2 wrote:

…is Bill a retoucher as well, everyone seems to be now. Then again his images are probably WORTH $50,000 even though he's been doing it for 10 minutes. He's probably got "retoucher with 12 years industry experience" on his MM profile.

If he is a retoucher I hope he is not using Photoshop Vista or the freaking program will be crashing every 5 minutes..LMFAO!

Natalia_Taffarel wrote:
if u can find someone doing something like this in 2 hours, I'll take it all back

http://www.nataliataffarel.com/Catherine.html

OH....MY..... GOD!!!

You are just damn amazing! I cannot imagine the patience and perseverance you have to make her a beautiful woman!

netmodel wrote:

Even if say one image takes only a few minutes to clean up while one image may take an hour to clean up?!?! That's why I just think it seems to be proper to rate by hour because you have no way of assessing images and you clock the time it takes you to complete the tasks.

Nothing I do takes a few minutes. I do have a basic retouch price, for your first scenario. E-mail correspondence, invoice, downloads, import, convert, retouch, compress, upload, e-mail, possible adjustment. Just the file handling can take a considerable amount of time.

Full retouch I know how long it will take me on average. Longer than 2hrs btw. So I can set a firm price. Sometimes it's quicker, sometimes it's longer but in the end it about works out.

For me I rather give up a few hours I may "loose" by doing this, but it's worth it to me simply by not having to try and keep track of time and timesheet.

Natalia_Taffarel wrote:
if u can find someone doing something like this in 2 hours, I'll take it all back

http://www.nataliataffarel.com/Catherine.html

I can do that in 2 hrs, but of course I'll bill for much more

Rafael Telles wrote:
Out of curiosity and having some time to waste while commuting home I wanted to determine what is the average price that MM retouchers charge for post processing a photo. I used the amounts stated by 205 persons in the thread: https://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=217707 so it should be a good reference to get a ball park figure.

Here are the numbers:


Draw your own conclusions. I am almost afraid of opening my mouth and being bashed for putting this up

just post on craigslist and you can find good retouchers who will work for less per image. as photoshop improves and people continue to show videos on how to edit things get cheaper.. plus editors who want to work with certain photographers or need extra exposure are smart and do some trade work here and there.