Nowadays every photographer has Photoshop on his computer. It is the digital darkroom. It is now possible for photographers to do all the color correction and retouching, i.e. the entire post-production process.
But the question each photographer should ask is do you want to?
Hourly Rate for Photographers
Using this Cost of Doing Business Calculator from the National Press Photographers Association, you can determine your required day rate. I plugged in the numbers for a photographer with a 1600 square foot studio that wants to earn 50K shooting 100 days per year. The required day rate came out to about 866 dollars per day or about 100 dollars per hour. Studio photographers have a lot of overhead and have to bill at a high rate.
Hourly Rate For Retouchers
But someone that specializes in Photoshop retouching has much less overhead than a photographer. Instead of a huge studio space, they can get by with a 6′x8′ cubical. So the required hourly rate is lower for Photoshop artist than for a photographer with a studio. They can bill more hours each week than a photographer. I plugged some numbers to earn the same 50K per year assuming a 40 hour workweek and came up with 291 dollars per day or about 36 dollars per hour.
Division of Labor
There is a principle in economics called the Division of Labor. It is the specialization of labor to specific tasks which allows for increased productivity. Adam Smith wrote about this in the manufacture of pins. A practical example is that an attorney that can bill clients at $200 per hour should let the $20 per hour secretary do the typing even if the attorney is a better typist.
Applying this principle to photography, a photographer that has $100 of overhead should let the retoucher with $36 of overhead do the retouching.
Days of Film
In the days of film, division of labor was well understood by the Photography profession. Few retail or commercial photography studios did their own lab work, printing or retouching. Some photographers had darkrooms, but they were mostly not profit-motivated–students, hobbyists or fine art.
But today this principle has been forgotten. High-end photographers are often spending 3 to 6 hours retouching one image. At $100 per hour this increases costs enormously.
My Recommendation
If your studio is busy enough, hire someone to do the retouching. When I had a studio, what I did was hire one person that did both makeup and retouching. This makes sense because she was retouching the makeup job she applied herself. On shooting days, we both worked on the production. On non-shooting days, I was doing pre-production job like painting sets and the makeup artists was doing post-production. (You are probably wondering why I wouldn’t hire a painter to paint the sets. Answer: painters make more than photographers!)
If your studio is not busy enough for even a part-time employee, outsource the work. The are businesses popping up that can do the retouching work for a low price, like $5 per image.
