A question of time.

Jeanne Marie

Hi everyone,

I need some advice on time.


I’ve been retouching now for several years and just recently moved to NYC. The retouching I did was with Lifetouch National School Studios and I was not permitted to use any of their images in my portfolio. In looking for work, I have to present a great portfolio, so that’s what I’m trying to build up now. But I’ve come to an interesting dilemma. How long should fashion and glamour retouching take?

At Lifetouch we had to work fast on the basics. With thousands of images coming through my department every day no more that a few minutes could be spent on each image. Unless it was sever damage, like a film rip or processor damage, or the photographer shot all of the short boys standing on a soap box for their prom pictures. (no, I'm not kidding, lol)

Now I find myself spending hours on one image :huh. It seems excessive, but I know that’s what employers are looking for ... a perfect retouching job.

But I don’t want to be misleading or get myself into a spot where I’ve created unreasonable expectations. If I get a job that expects me to reproduce what I’ve done in my portfolio, but do it in an hour ...
so, you see one of my problems.
The other one's just getting an interview .

I feel like I’ve been retouching for long enough to know what’s expected, but Lifetouch was such a different ball game. A good idea how long glamour and fashion retouching should take will give me a goal at least. I know that every image is different, but in the ball park of starting with a pretty great shot and taking it to wow ... :dunno

Also, any job advise will be received with thanks as well.

edgework

Jeanne Marie wrote:

Hi everyone,

I need some advice on time.


I’ve been retouching now for several years and just recently moved to NYC. The retouching I did was with Lifetouch National School Studios and I was not permitted to use any of their images in my portfolio. In looking for work, I have to present a great portfolio, so that’s what I’m trying to build up now. But I’ve come to an interesting dilemma. How long should fashion and glamour retouching take?

At Lifetouch we had to work fast on the basics. With thousands of images coming through my department every day no more that a few minutes could be spent on each image. Unless it was sever damage, like a film rip or processor damage, or the photographer shot all of the short boys standing on a soap box for their prom pictures. (no, I'm not kidding, lol)

Now I find myself spending hours on one image . It seems excessive, but I know that’s what employers are looking for ... a perfect retouching job.

But I don’t want to be misleading or get myself into a spot where I’ve created unreasonable expectations. If I get a job that expects me to reproduce what I’ve done in my portfolio, but do it in an hour ...
so, you see one of my problems.
The other one's just getting an interview .

I feel like I’ve been retouching for long enough to know what’s expected, but Lifetouch was such a different ball game. A good idea how long glamour and fashion retouching should take will give me a goal at least. I know that every image is different, but in the ball park of starting with a pretty great shot and taking it to wow ...

Also, any job advise will be received with thanks as well.

Hi Jeanne,

I've been working in the same market, NYC, for about 15 years. The answer to your question is quite easily summed up by an old boss's favorite instuction to me on most occasions: "I need it on press in an hour. It better be perfect."

A lot depends on where in the production chain you are positioned. In the 90's most ad agencies had in-house studios that cranked out crap lo-res comps which they then shipped off to their pre-press shop for high-res retouching and final output. Most of the production time that their projects were budgeted for was eaten up by the endless deliberations that go on in ad agencies, where fifteen people have to agree on every comma and pixel. This meant that the actual retouching work was always under the gun with crushing deadlines. Retouchers were stuck with compensating for the useless waste that came before.

These days, while the dedicated prepress shops are still around, most agencies are trying to bring their prepress work in-house with (hopefully) fully operational prepress departments. This is good, and bad. On the plus side, the retouchers benefit from the local deep pockets; equipment is usually better, and you have a much broader time-frame to get the job done. The downside is that those fifteen people are now looking over your shoulder, instead of the single sales rep from a prepress house who was the lone conduit to the art directors and all the indecisive madness that flutters around them like gnats.

You have to be willing to do your job, when dealing with these people, and that means staking out your territory and holding to it. I have worked with art directors for years; I know what they do, and most of the time, I'm impressed by how they work. That's not what I do and I'm okay with that. I'm a mechanic, creative, yes, but still a nuts and bolts guy. My job is to produce what they imagine. Part of that job is to be decisive about what is and is not possible. Anyone who wants a beauty face for Revlon or a cover shot with Tyra Banks worked up in an hour is delusional and deserves to be scorned and laughed at behind their backs, and I will tell them that, though with all due diplomacy. If they need it fast, you have to decide where to short them. Maybe you won't spend an hour with the healing brush working over every pore. Maybe you'll use that smoothing algorithm that gets an okay result in five minutes. Those are your decisions, and you need to hold on to the right to make those judgment calls as you see fit. Most art directors have at best a rudimentary understanding of the production pipeline that exists after they spin their creations, and even less understanding of Photoshop, so you never take their advice or direction as to HOW you get your results. I tell them, "Tell me what you want, I'll call you when I have something to show you." That usually works.

But, deep pockets or no, time is always money and most of the time you can't indulge yourself. A high-res beauty shot, with hair masking and serious skin-work isn't going to get done in under 3 or 4 hours, and that's for the first round. There are revisions, and, depending on your shop, they can go on forever. If the expectation really is for a finished product in an hour, that's fine, but expect to cut corners. Your job will be how to best hide the short cuts.

I'd put up a good web site for yourself, with before/after rollovers. I got rid of my "book" four years ago and haven't had any negative results. If they complain about web resolution, I ship them a CD with high res samples, but usually it's convenient to answer an ad with a link that puts your work right up front. Just keep in mind that on the new Cinema Displays and other flat screens, 20" and up, an older sized web page of 800 x 600 pixels gets totally lost, along with all that good skin detail that will be your selling point. Make your page big enough to fill a 20" display. I've always considered it a first-line editing feature as well: shops that are still using small CRT screens that can't fit my pages are probably cutting corners elsewhere as well, and I wouldn't want to work there.

Good luck. It's a small industry and getting smaller. There's still a need for quality high-end retouching work, but there are plenty of fresh art school grads who know how to make a drop shadow and call themselves retouchers because of it, and plenty of trendy little boutique shops who think that means "expert." The bottom line is they'll work cheap. If you're good, you'll look harder and longer for the right position, but you'll find it.

wxwax

Great post, Edge.

Jeanne Marie

I agree
Thanks so much for the advice and encouragement.

I know exactly what you mean about "the useless waste that came before.”
Any time there was damage to film in processing or frame grabbing or what have you, days where spent trying to find out who’s fault it was and how it happened. Not to mention what do with the reel of film (which could be hundreds of images), fix it or re-shoot. Knowing that re-shoot is a dirty word, we were nearly always told to fix the damage.
They (upper management) also thought they knew Photoshop, and I can guarantee they didn’t know how to make a drop shadow. The final decision was made without ever consulting a retoucher. It amazed me the kind of things they would bring to us that needed to ship in 12 hours.

When I took over managing the retouching department, the first things I did was to make sure we where actually consulted before any promises could be made. It worked out well considering that I could tell them how long and how many retouchers it would take this to fix it, if it even could be fixed. They seemed a bit lost at first not needing to discuss it for hours, but in the end they found other things to have meetings about, and we got the work sooner.

Another issue was avoided as well in this approach. My idea of fixed and their idea of fixed where actually the same thing, they just didn’t know it. When I say fix, I mean transparent fix. No one would ever know anything happened to that film.
First they would give us film I knew we could not fix in time or budget. Then, during the retouching process, as they walked by or checked on the progress of the job, they would tell retouchers that what they had on the screen was good enough, move on to the next image. :uhoh
When it printed however, it became another story. They didn’t want “good enough”, they wanted transparent. No suprize there.
You would think they would realize this after a few times, but this happened thousands of times, over and over. Huge amounts of paper waste, missed deadlines and unhappy photographers. Not to mention it was the retoucher that was blamed for the shoty image.
When I was able to judge the job before hand, we didn’t even try it if I knew it couldn’t be a transparent fix.

Strangely enough, more pressure was put on not damaging the film to begin with and we started seeing less of it, lol. Back to the acne and glass glare.


As for my work now and the quality of the job I want to do, I had a feeling I was on the right track. Hours spent dodging and burning a neutral mask is the only way I know to get perfect skin. I’ve just never tried to get this kind of perfection before and I needed to confirm my time spent on it, which you did. Many thanks.

As soon as I get some work online perhaps you could critique it for me.
I need brutal honesty and constructive criticism. I can’t think of anyone better to give me that then a fifteen year vet of the NYC retouch trenches.:):

nokout3839

edgework wrote:

there are plenty of fresh art school grads who know how to make a drop shadow and call themselves retouchers because of it

Ahh, drop shadow, will there ever be a more abused feature?

Nice post Edge,

Nigel