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Timing. Am I a fast or slow retoucher??
Hello, I tried to do a search for this topic and couldn't find one, so apoligies if this is something people ask a lot. Since I'm new to the world of retouching, I'd like to get an idea of how much time those of you who are actually doing this professionally take to work on images, specifically high-end retouching. (beauty/editorial/fashion/commercial work) I've found a lot of good resources/tutorials about how to make things happen, but feel like I haven't heard much about how long things actually take from start to finish....minutes? hours? days? It would be great if a few of you could post before and after pics, with what you basically did and how long it took. I'm asking specifically about high-end situations. Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this! Aug 23 15 07:14 pm Link Boy, there are a whole range of answers here! For me the length of time sometimes correlates to how commercial I want to make this image. If im doing 5 nice retouches from a 150 image photoshoot for a model...then it might be 20-25 minutes an image. If im doing a dodge and burn to get that perfect skin look...then im automatically in the 3-5 hour range because of the very large number of "minute corrections" I have to make on the many pores on the face. Models skin condition, MUA makeup skill, my lighting choices... either help or hurt my time spent on that image obviously. If its that perfect face look im after it can take 5-12 hours if conditions are not great to start with. If I do individual pore level raise and lower spot luminosity and color correct ...thats a lot of pixels across a face...especially if I also try to include some hair strand retouching... with darkening light cross over strands... or working at the edges of a cutout...reconstructing individual hair strands...that can easily add 1-2 hours to a retouch. Obviously the level of detail you work at has a lot to do with it. If its a cheap $5-20 retouch...you can maybe afford to spend maybe 30 min at an image depending on how you value your time. $10-40 an hour is good for some people...other people that have business expenses... and are not doing it for love, practice or experience... might have to obviously charge more... which means they usually then spend more time per image to make their prices justified. At some point some retouchers figure out that they do certain steps all the time...and they make Actions for those sets of repetitive keystrokes...so 1 key press does 8 separate actions in 4 seconds. The really smart ones make up a master action that tries to place most all of the steps onto auto pilot... so if youre into actions...you could REALLY cut down your time. Just some stray thoughts about time spent per image... im sure others will have some more great stuff for you. Also....If i dont "pre-mark up" each image first on a separate clear transparent layer... with exactly what I want to do in each area...then I end up not knowing when good is good enough...and I end up spending a lot more time because now im correcting way more stuff than might really be asked or called for. Aug 23 15 09:09 pm Link  It takes me usually between 2 and 3 hours to retouch a photo. I spent around 3 hours on this photo. Aug 24 15 08:27 am Link Fashion work generally takes me around an hour or two at most, maybe more if it's something like swimwear/glamour and there's a lot of skin to work on. Beauty shots can take anywhere between 3-8 hours depending on the image. Most of the time when the image is cropped like a portrait and it's a clean look it takes less time but if it's a super close shot with tons of makeup and hair styling I need to fix it'll take more time. Every image is different but normally I don't ever got over 8 hours. Aug 24 15 08:38 am Link TMA Photo and Retouch wrote: Aug 24 15 08:53 am Link TMA Photo and Retouch wrote: Wow. Thanks for this. It makes me feel a lot less worried about the amount of time I've spent practicing/honing my skills. Aug 24 15 08:53 am Link Going to add this in too - If you do high end beauty with a bunch of detail work, you're probably going to spend at least 8 hours or more. High end as in commercial beauty, beauty portraiture, etc. Not always but I just wanted to let you know that in case it happens so you won't think you're slow or something  5-12 hours like TMA said is a good ballpark range. Aug 24 15 09:45 am Link The time for the retouching it's up to the client / buyer's requests and budget This is why I don't have standard price per photo (in general). I work on a hourly price. Each client/project is different. Some photographers are asking for 10 - 20 minutes of retouch per photo, others 1 hour, others 4 hours, 10 hours... In general professional photographers are also good retouchers, so they know how much time would take to edit one photo up to their preference. Most photos from my portfolio are retouched 40 - 90 minutes. Apart from this - I offer (on a website) a service for ~1h of work per photo. This service can be ordered by anyone, not just professional photographers. I think 1h is a fair price / quality offer for someone seeking to improve the quality of an image. Aug 24 15 10:13 am Link I take 15 minutes for standard fashion work, and half an hour for standard beauty work... here are some samples from start to finish, some areas are twice the speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0UgQcboZ8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5ZDOf9Wq_I Hi-end is a term used around loosely these days, and some of the commercial brands eligible in that category are listed here: http://top10for.com/top-10-best-famous- … ands-2015/ If you edit for them commercially, you are officially a hi end beauty retoucher. But then these companies don't hire freelance retouchers, but retouching studios like Box etc. 8-10 hrs is about the time they spend retouching on a face that is going to be plastered worldwide. After that it is converted to CMYK, color corrected and test proofed, and some changes are made again. It makes a lot of sense commercially, as these assignments pay thousands of dollars to the retouching studio. For personal portfolio work you can take 8 to 80 hrs to do a beauty retouch. Dodge & Burn the hell out of it...and do some more. Its all cool. But when you work for big brands, or do this freelance for living, time is money, literally. You have to be super fast, sharp and practical if you don't want to spend hours in front of your computer(even though you like it now) in exchange for a couple of 100 bucks and a pat in your back. My insight is blunt, but I am passionate about this stuff, and really want to see my fellow retouchers thrive in the industry, and make a mark, so sorry if I've offended anyone. Aug 26 15 07:42 pm Link |
