Anna Kirikova wrote:
Hi, may be, the topic has been already discussed, but I would like to ask a question))) i am a photographer (though I am using my retouching profile now) and I' ve been retouching or asking people to retouch mostly beauty images. But now I need to have several fashion shots retouched but I really do not know how much I will have to pay for retouching (I mean to a good retoucher with good color correction skills). Will the average price be the same as for beauty retouching? Will it be lower or higher? What factors does the price for fashion retouching depend on?  Answers to this question will help me not only understand if I can afford a retoucher for fashion shots on a regular basis but have some understanding on how to set prices if I ever have time to retouch images for other photographers again. Thanks in advance!

the rate should be the same as any other rate, an hourly rate. Ask how many hours to retouch the images and you will know how much it will cost

JoshuaBerardi wrote:
Because one works swiftly, they ought to be payed less?
Of course not.

Of course not.

An agency charges $200 an hour but they quote the client a fixed fee based on brief.

Many professionals do the same thing. We stipulate rates per project based on an hourly fee considering the specifics of the job

Greg Curran wrote:
I charge hourly and per image, it all depends on the client and the work.  Took a long time to get it right but that way works out best for everyone.

Just a question to help others.

Do you have set rates you want to hit, or goals for rates you want to hit, or how do you come up with those numbers?

Just on a high level.




Andrew Thomas Evans
www.andrewthomasevans.com

Andrew Thomas Evans wrote:

Just a question to help others.

Do you have set rates you want to hit, or goals for rates you want to hit, or how do you come up with those numbers?

Just on a high level.




Andrew Thomas Evans
www.andrewthomasevans.com

An over simplified answer may be this; look at what others charge outside and inside your area. Look at what services they are offering, their quality, their turn around time, the clients they work with. Use that information against what they set their prices at to find what YOU think is fair for your price. The $5 retoucher will get $5 work. The $40 retoucher will get $40 work. Make sure your skills are aligned with the pricing you choose.

It takes trials and errors to get pricing down to what is fair and comfortable for your retouching services. I have retouched professionally since 2003. (When I say "professionally" I mean that's how I paid my bills and ate. I did this from 2003-2009. I'm still retouching outside my current day job to this day.) I have been well underpaid for many projects. Most of those were because of the pay-by-the-hour thing. (If pay by the hour works for you, then, good. It doesn't for me so much.)

What I would run into is a headache in quoting every job by the hour, because most jobs I was doing were different. I didn't see a point of having an hourly price point when I would have to tailor that hourly price point for every job. (Plus, my client over the interwebz doesn't know how much time I'm taking to do their images, which I don't see as fit or fair to them. Plus I got sick of using a timer for every job I did.) I realized I was wasting time and needed to charge for doing this process, or come up with a way to make this process quick and consistent. Good business is consistent.

Now, some will have a number in their head, like $300, and then divide that into a guess of how many hours it might take them to do the work. Then, divide $300 by that guess and have an hourly rate. The issue is when an art director changes images, or wants to add a bunch of things in the end, or it simply took you much longer to do the job that you calculated. Then, the hourly price point is less valid and you have now become an underpaid retoucher.

How do I personally do it? I nerded it up with a 150 cell spreadsheet that calculates everything for me from quantity, type of work, scope of work, discounts, and it sometimes makes me breakfast as well.