In the real world, a client honestly doesn’t care how many hours you’re likely to invest into the job, they’re interested in factoring your cost into their budget and making a value judgment.

That's why I prefer to charge per image/project after I see the previews. And I never agree to work for $5, where did you get this number? My rates are mentioned on my page, the range is $15-50.

Robert Randall wrote:
You need to establish your hourly rate during your visits with the production supervisor and the art buyer, the creatives at large agencies could care less what you charge. If you go into a meeting with these people and tell them you can do an edit for $5.00, they may remain polite, but you'll never get any work from them.  Lately, the agencies have been banding together in an effort to control pricing because their clients are dictating cost saving measures. So, a fair question to ask is this... "Is your agency working to standardize hourly fees, and if so, please tell me what that fee is". It's about the only way you're ever going to find out what the truthful hourly rate is. Once they give you that rate, call one of their retouch vendors to validate the rate. If it's a rate you can live with, you're almost home.

While this may be a common practice for some such an approach rejects the whole idea of having an hourly rate based on actual expenses and project requirements. If the party receiving the goods/services is granted total control (of the work, the schedule and the payment) then they own everything, including the one who does the work. This is rather a way of slavery rather than a fair trade.

Robert Randall wrote:
The next part is tricky. In Chicago, the going rate used to be $250.00 per hour. Due to the standardization of rates, if you want work in Chicago, you need to be at the most $180.00 per hour. Those numbers are quite meaningless until you tell the client how many hours you'll need to complete a retouch project. I've been working on digital retouch systems since 1989, most of the work I get I can do in my sleep because I've done it so many times. So if I quote a project at 10 hours, I'll likely finish in 7 or 8. Someone else that doesn't have my level of experience, may quote 10 hours, but it will take them 16. So, what does that $180.00 per hour actually mean... not much, but it's at least a standard to work around. The tricky part I mentioned at the start of this paragraph, you need to figure out how many hours your competition is actually estimating on their quote form in order to be competitive. If you're estimating 10 hours and a vendor they already use is estimating 5 hours, you lose. If you estimate 5 hours and their established vendor estimates 10 hours, you lose again, simply because they have no track record with you and will be suspicious of your extremely low estimate.

Suppose there is a retouching project which requires actual physical 10 hours - even for the fastest, most skillful and most proficient expert. Suppose also that the client is an expert who is aware of all that and not merely a layman who hires other experts, i.e. that the client is outsourcing not because of lack of expertise but for the sake of optimizing the process. Considering that: why would anyone who is sane budget these 10h as $2500 or $1800 instead of $500? For $50/h the client would be able to hire practically any good retoucher (except those who are artificially overpriced). Even more: there are people who are very good and who would be happy to work even for $30. So what is the logical, healthy, sane basis for standard rate of $180 or $250? Obviously the reason is neither expertise, nor timing, nor the cost of resources needed to do the work. It rather sounds along the lines of someone willing to buy another luxury yacht.

ivancoart wrote:
As for the retouching rates - I don't understand hourly pay at all!
Firstly, I don't know for sure how much time the project will take. Secondly, it doesn't matter for the client either. There's a dedline and there's a budget. That's it. The client pays for the result, not just your time.

With varying input (raw material, requirements, budgets) the only possible fixed rate is the hourly rate because it is based on expenses and yearly workload, not on the variable input. Example (fictitious numbers): If you know that in your country you need $10,000 yearly to cover your life expenses and you work approx. 1000h yearly your hourly rate is $10/h. How many hours you will have to work on a particular project depends on the input you receive from the client. Considering you know how long it would take you approximately to fulfill client requirements after having seen the raw material, you can either accept the request or reject it if it is physically impossible to fulfill within client's budget without going below your hourly rate.

Having a per image rate creates the need for having a variable rate which introduces unclarity. Even withing the same shoot different images may require different physical time to work on. Using the example calculation above a beauty image of 30mpx may take either 2h ($20) or 10h ($100). Setting an average flat rate of $50 per image for all clients and projects would mean you are attempting to over charge clients whose images need 2h (which will push them away) and you are not getting what you need from those whose images need actual 10h. Or why would I pay you $30 or even $15 per image if all I need is to develop and color grade a wedding of 1000 images? Surely it doesn't need resources costing $15k. So as you understand pricing per image is conceptually flawed (unless you retouch only very similar images with minimal variations).

In the real world, a client honestly doesn’t care how many hours you’re likely to invest into the job, they’re interested in factoring your cost into their budget and making a value judgment.

Neither does the client care about whether you use D&B or whatever technique. And although he may not care about how much time you spend being transparent about your process is a sign that you are an honest person to work with and not someone merely throwing numbers around. Additionally the time you spend matters for determining the turnaround. So considering that you may set a secondary hourly rate for urgent orders which would require you to work more than 10 or 12h per day in order to deliver the output in time.

That's why I prefer to charge per image/project after I see the previews. And I never agree to work for $5, where did you get this number? My rates are mentioned on my page, the range is $15-50.

Robert was rather giving examples, not directed at your particular price list. You need to consider also that one could color grade 1000 images with the same look for less than $5 per image and get more money than if one settles a minimum rate of $15 per image. Also if I am a client and I see your price $15-50 my logical question is - well, how much would you actually charge me? A variation of %330 surely doesn't give me any specific information - neither about how efficient you are, nor about my particular images. It is rather a number hanging in the air.

anchev wrote:
if I am a client and I see your price $15-50 my logical question is - well, how much would you actually charge me? A variation of %330 surely doesn't give me any specific information - neither about how efficient you are, nor about my particular images. It is rather a number hanging in the air.

the situation with hourly pay is just the same, isn't it? how do they know how many hours you'll spend? are the clients stupid enough not to show the previews before the discussion? ok, then I can tell just a wide range.
if they are a bit cleverer, they send the previews and I can set a fixed price based on the complexity of the job.

p.s. I don't do just color correction and bulk editing. every retoucher should have a specialization (imho).

Robert Randall wrote:
Those numbers are quite meaningless until you tell the client how many hours you'll need to complete a retouch project.

anchev,
can you do it without seeing the material? no. so, your hourly rate is another "number hanging in the air"!
besides, someone works faster, another one is a bit slower. the client shouldn't care about it.

Robert Randall wrote:
I think that some of your confusion stems from the fact that I'm only discussing retouch from the perspective I know, which is dealing directly with ad agencies. I have never worked as a day laborer for another retouch house, although I have hired people in that capacity to help me out periodically. Those people charge anywhere from $20.00 to $65.00 per hour for outlining, spot knocking, and some color adjustments. I'll concede that the hourly rate can be a nebulous thing when I'm hiring, so we usually come to an agreement based on what they will accomplish for how much money.

When I work for an ad agency, I'm given a creative brief with instructions for what they want in a final image. I base my estimate on that brief, how long I think it will take, multiplied by how much I charge per hour. Once they accept my estimate, I can do the work in half the time or three times the time, and they don't care as long as my final invoice matches their purchase order.

As far as ad agencies in Minsk are concerned, I simply used them as a starting point. I live in Chicago, but I can't begin to remember how many times I've flown to NYC, LA, Dallas, Minneapolis, Toronto, etc, to show my book. You can come up with as many excuses as you like for why it's difficult for you, but the reality is, it's just about the same for everyone. No one started at the bottom, and got to the top at the end of one day, it takes a lot of work.

Your comments were wonderful to read and enlightening.

ivancoart wrote:
the situation with hourly pay is just the same, isn't it?

No. The hourly rate is not a range of rates. It is fixed.

ivancoart wrote:
how do they know how many hours you'll spend?

It is included in the quote I send to the client.

ivancoart wrote:
are the clients stupid enough not to show the previews before the discussion? ok, then I can tell just a wide range.
if they are a bit cleverer, they send the previews and I can set a fixed price based on the complexity of the job.

I require from the client the original raw material before preparing a quote. Raw data is very different from "previews" and it is crucial to image quality and to the time needed to have the actual material one needs to work with. JPG is an export format, not a processing one. Raw is made for post-processing. It is not only of higher technical quality but also faster to work with (if one knows how). So if anyone sends me JPG or TIFF "previews" I kindly ask them to show me the original material they want me to work on, so that I am 100% sure I am not misleading them by quoting for a material which is already processed in some way. In cases where there is simply no raw (someone shoots JPG) - I include a warning about quality when sending the quote.

ivancoart wrote:
p.s. I don't do just color correction and bulk editing. every retoucher should have a specialization (imho).

Then you are missing interesting job opportunities. I do everything - corporate portraits, weddings, fashion, beauty, glamour, commercial, products, textures etc. Specialization based on genre or on particular set of techniques shows rather limited understanding of the process than excellence in a particular field.

ivancoart wrote:
anchev,
can you do it without seeing the material? no. so, your hourly rate is another "number hanging in the air"!

No, it is not. I already explained that there is a factual basis for how it is calculated.

ivancoart wrote:
besides, someone works faster, another one is a bit slower. the client shouldn't care about it.

Being fast for the sake of it is another misnomer. First comes understanding of image structure, then the process required to change that structure, then speed. I am sure there are people who can destroy an image in 5 seconds using a plugin or another technique based on YouTube or FB nonsense (including the D&B nonsense which can also destroy the image). Personally I have never advertised myself as being fast. Clients don't choose me because of speed alone. In fact quite often they contact me because they are sick of those fast conveyor workers who crap their images. Still I am quite confident that the meticulous process I use is as fast as physically possible with currently available hardware and software. Not because I am trying to be cheap or expensive but because I hate to waste my time with boring repetitive operations.

Robert Randall wrote:
I think that some of your confusion stems from the fact that I'm only discussing retouch from the perspective I know, which is dealing directly with ad agencies. I have never worked as a day laborer for another retouch house, although I have hired people in that capacity to help me out periodically.

I work with ad agencies too (though not only) and I have never worked in a retouch house either. When I outsource part of my work to others I prefer those to be people who I have educated personally. There is just too much wrong educational material nowadays. Regardless of that my point was about the unjustified hourly rates. As you pointed out yourself - in the end it all comes down to:

what they will accomplish for how much money.

Robert Randall wrote:
When I work for an ad agency, I'm given a creative brief with instructions for what they want in a final image. I base my estimate on that brief, how long I think it will take, multiplied by how much I charge per hour. Once they accept my estimate, I can do the work in half the time or three times the time, and they don't care as long as my final invoice matches their purchase order.

Same here. As soon as I receive the input I need I reply with a quote. Upon acceptance it gets processed as per its description.

Robert Randall wrote:
When I work for an ad agency, I'm given a creative brief with instructions for what they want in a final image. I base my estimate on that brief, how long I think it will take, multiplied by how much I charge per hour. Once they accept my estimate, I can do the work in half the time or three times the time, and they don't care as long as my final invoice matches their purchase order.

anchev wrote:
Same here. As soon as I receive the input I need I reply with a quote. Upon acceptance it gets processed as per its description.

The one vague point in all of this has been your "Rate". Unless I'm misreading the statements in this thread, it seems the idea of an hourly rate is frowned upon.

I understand that most people who have never worked in the arena I work in, would be skeptical of the numbers I spout. However, in order to establish continuity in the estimate process, there has to be a basis from which to start. I'm not asking you what your number is, I'm asking if you have one. Without a base hourly number, I can't begin to imagine how you're able to estimate jobs.

Robert Randall wrote:
The one vague point in all of this has been your "Rate".

Why is it vague? I explained how it is calculated.

Unless I'm misreading the statements in this thread, it seems the idea of an hourly rate is frowned upon.

I have never had a client who understands the photographic process and frowns upon it.

I understand that most people who have never worked in the arena I work in, would be skeptical of the numbers I spout. However, in order to establish continuity in the estimate process, there has to be a basis from which to start. I'm not asking you what your number is, I'm asking if you have one. Without a base hourly number, I can't begin to imagine how you're able to estimate jobs.

Of course I have one, it is publicly available on my website. I have been working based on an hourly rate for the last 13-14 years on CG, photography, video and photo post-production projects. Currently I use a simple web form through which clients send requests for retouching.