What High-End Retouching Costs

What moves the price

Two things set our price: how complex the image is and what you need delivered.

Complexity is about how much has to be done to the picture. Simple color and clean-up sits toward the low end. These push it higher:

• Detailed skin work on a close-up.
• Reshaping how clothes sit on a body.
• Combining several frames into one image.
• Removing objects or people, or extending a background.
• Matching a product exactly to a sample.

Deliverables are about what you get at the end. An image for one web size is a different job from one that also needs print files, an outdoor version and several crops.

Why prices online vary so much

Published prices run from under a dollar for basic bulk edits to several hundred dollars an image for complex work. They aren't really the same product. A cheap per-image price usually means a fixed list of simple edits done at volume, which can be exactly right for a large set of plain product images.

Campaign and editorial retouching takes longer because every image gets its own decisions, and detailed work on one close-up can take hours. It's worth comparing like with like. Editorial, campaign and e-commerce retouching explains how the work differs.

Turnaround

Our turnaround is 24 hours to 2 weeks, depending on how many images there are and our workload. Include your deadline when you ask for a quote, so the quote can take it into account.

How to get an accurate quote

A quote can only be as good as what it's based on. Send:

• The number of images.
• One or two typical frames, or a link to them.
• What has to change, even in rough form.
• Where the images will run, and the files you need.
• Your deadline.

How to brief a retoucher has a template you can use.

What to compare between quotes

• Is the price per image, per hour or per project?
• How many rounds of changes are included?
• Which files do you get back, and are layered files included?
• Does it include print files and format versions?
• Who does the work, and can you see similar work?

You can see our work in the fashion, beauty and commercial portfolios.