In Andrew Hetherington’s neato Dinner for 5 Photographers video, someone mentions the rumour that photographers had begun outsourcing their retouching off-shore. I had heard this before from Sheridan College teacher and Fine Art Photographer Rafael Goldchain. From his series I Am My Family:
© Rafael Goldchain
Here’s what Rafael had to say at a talk he gave to the Photographic Historical Society of Canada about a year ago:
Goldchain mentioned that a future trend appears to be that digital files in need of correction and manipulation will simply be sent off-shore to low wage retouching shops in India. The emphasis then needs to be on picture taking and getting the right colour balance and exposure in the camera.
Question: Really? Is this happening?
***** Update: Check out the rate card posted by Greg Ceo here.
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
I get spam from offshore places wanting to do services like this but I’ve never actually looked into it.
There are a few large Canadian companies who regularly send off their images to be retouched/post produced in China or India. They’ve been doing it for sometime. The most requested service seems to be creating paths on images shot on white.
Thats the first I’ve heard of that and man is that depressing and kinda scary. We already off shored most our manufacturing jobs, what are we suppose to do once they do the same to our creative jobs? This is something that should be nipped in the bud asap but I guess thats capitalism..
I started getting emails from places in India about two years ago. We tried it out, sent about 10 images to get basic retouching done. The quality was really poor and it was obvious they were not working on color calibrated systems. Nothing we could actually use. Of course, they only charge $15 per image.
I used to work at a company who created large quantities of images for online retail fashion catalogues. There were roughly a dozen freelance retouchers at the height of business, but that still wasn’t enough to handle the load of images daily, so they were shipped to India before hand to do a “first round.” Every person would average 30-40 images a day with this workflow. After the recession hit, the retouchers went from a dozen to two, with India doing most of the work. For the record, the company was/is filled with a lot of great people, and this isn’t in anyway supposed to be a “grudge post”, just an informative one.
yes it is, as stated above, for paths and spotting…catalog. but who’s to say that the powerhouse international printing company with a photo arm isn’t out sourcing what you think is being done in NA? that was from the horse’s mouth with a grin and a chuckle…
It’s a good, cost effective way of getting cut-outs done, but I can see them moving ‘up the ladder’ over time. For example fixing up problems with stray hair, sorting our creased fabric and comping.
If the software development industry is anything to go by, they can be pretty good at doing well defined repeatable tasks cheaply. I think that any individuals that have real creative flair will end up coming to the US or Europe to work though most likely so it’s more difficult to imagine the real creative work happening in India.
I have one client that outsources to India. They flew over there and set up their own office just for that purpose. Then they hired retouchers and such, flew them to Canada to train them in their own style of retouching and have them learn their preferred methods of retouching, putting them up in a hotel the entire time. After a few weeks, back to India they flew, to work in my clients newly created shop, using the methods my client preferred. Wow.
This has been happening for quite some time; at least 3 or 4 years. I outline one such company on my blog with their prices:
http://gregceoblog.com/?p=1416&preview=true
My problem doesn´t has to do with the people in India because they are working to earn their money honestly, I want to be clear with this because the haven´t done anything wrong.
My problem is with our fellow photographers and companies in the USA: what good will be our country if we let all our jobs to be taken to other countries? what will we be producing? what about our workforce? in the name of “cheapness” we shun our professionals because they are more expensive (because of how expensive life is in our own country) are we going to a situation where our workforce is going to be doing nothing because companies feel this should be done?…
Retouchers in the former east bloc countries and Russia are pretty good and very cheap. The effect of that results in USA based retouchers dropping prices dramatically. However, just like photographers have a style or strong suit, so do retouchers. You still need to pick a retoucher that works well with what you want the end result to be. That might be one from McLean Virginia or Belarus depending on what you need done.
Wow, thats such a great idea, and for such a cheap rate.(ahem) I think sending your product out, especially one that is not a mass produced one, but an image that your reputation, name, and livelihood is depending on is a real smart move.(ahem) So long as youre doing that, you can stfu about the state of our economy and our suffering job market too. I can account numerous occasions where I have had to deal with outsourced customer service to the other countries like india as a consumer myself, and im sure anyone would agree that its one of the most annoying things to deal with.
I think that would blow over well with your clients too. “Oh hi yes Mr XYZ magazine, I should be getting that cover shot back any moment now, I sent it out for retouching an hour ago to india, not to worry , I opted for the $25 deluxe package”
This has indeed been around for a while and though it sounds like a good deal, most good deals come with a cost.
In this case, if you are doing simple work for catalogs, or need simple corrections, you may benefit from off-shore retouching. If however you need to do paths and any composite work, you may me in for a nightmare. I did send some work out a while ago just to see what its merits would be. Fast and cheap. Not great.
A retoucher is not, and should not be considered an outsource for work. The value you put in is the value you get back. I have worked with a lot of retouchers especially, Subtle Composites aka Stephen Cribbin, Victor Tavares, Brett Simms and Mark Tyler. They are artists and the value they bring is priceless.
****Heather**** If you would like, I will happily send some simple work out to india for retouching against something I have had done here, with Victor. A simple test, Images shot on white.
It’s been happening, but as stated, mostly for pathing and such for catalogue type work. The other work that has been outsourced, to India and China, is well below all industry standards. I’ve never lost any work to outsourcing and the types of work that is outsourced, I don’t want to do. There are a million monkeys in the world and a lot of them have programs such as Photoshop, but the same is true with cameras and not everyone is Avedon. Like anything, the low and mid go away or are done by the photographer themselves (or get outsourced to monkeys), the true high end stays right where it’s at. If you’re not at the top, get there NOW or you’re out of a job. Same thing with photography.
Please note: When I write “monkeys” I mean nothing derogatory in terms of race, gender, etc. I’m only referencing The infinite monkey theorem.
It’s just another way to cut corners, and work within the ever slimming budgets photographers are getting from clients. Welcome to Thomas Friedman’s Flat World.
Has it really become that hard to take a decent photo? At what point are we going to wake up, look in the mirror and realize we’ve gone too far? Seriously, retouching has become as addictive as plastic surgery. We’re going to look back at work from this time period and shake our heads, walk past it in MOMA 50 years from now and think “What the Hell were they thinking?”
Removing stray hairs, reshaping eyebrows, taking out buildings, removing gum from sidewalks, placing people in different backdrops like a cheap Sears Portrait studio?? The real issue is what we define as “the perfect image.” I’m all for processing an image in the digital darkroom using the same principles that were available to us in the lab but all this photo illustration passed off as photography has got to stop before the CGI team from Avatar is doing all our jobs. Seems like everyone is living outside of reality and has gone so far from what makes photography beautiful and turned it into something far more grotesque. That ability to capture a moment looses it’s maturity when you start making minor tweaks, which then become removing objects, to people and so on and so forth.
Customization has become a real effeciency killer in today’s world. Disguised as progress, when in fact it is nothing more than spin-doctoring. You used to be able to go to a coffee shop and order a regular coffee. Now you have half-caf-decaf-soy-no faom-lowfat-extra hot-hazelnut-lattes???? Seriously WTF? Why does an image have to be so heavily retouched these days? And why is it when we take images that are not heavily retouched they’re labeled as “Raw” and “Edgy”, treated like some kind of fringe photography? When in fact it’s more honest and true to the art form than some head opening juicy fruit ad.
I think both photographers and Creative folk a like really need to think about what they are doing. Photography and Design should stop and make you think, not leave you with a hangover like a wild Las Vegas poker night. The most creative and effective ads are the ones you barely notice, their message sinks in without having to bombard you with a circus of tricks. I draw your attention to the 80′s McCains commercial of the kid eating krinkle fries with Ketchup. The whole commercial was a one-take with him just enjoying the fries. No 40 different angle cuts, wild transitions etc. Just a kid eating fries, to this day I still eat McCains fries because of that ad. Food for thought folks. peace
Tim
Rant much Timothy? Manipulation of photos has been done since the inception of photography. Something looks good or it doesn’t. It’s that simple. Now you have more idiots in the darkroom and the world is smaller so you see more of the idiots creations, that’s it. Very little of what’s being done today hasn’t been done in the past.
AND, it’s not like retouching (as it’s now called) digital manipulation, or whatever you want to call it was invented yesterday. Where have you been the last 20 years? 50, 100?
An image need not be ‘retouched’ at all. Trends come and go. Taste is subjective. Remember the clothing of the 70s, 80s, 90s…? Hell, all clothing ever. Just an example. There are more different flavors of photography now than ever before. There’s a need for photography more now than ever before. Good is good. Bad is bad.
Anthony, thanks for the History lesson. I am aware of the principle of manipulation. I have a masters in Soviet History, even Stalin altered paintings to make it appear as though Lenin were at his side. You seem to have missed my point, peoples interpretation of what is “GOOD” has become deranged. But hey, you have your opinion and I have mine, God bless free speech right? Keep on attacking me, because clearly my post was specifically aimed at ruining your afternoon soy latte. And to answer your question, 50 years ago, I wasn’t alive.
What I find most amusing about your attempted rebutle is this notion of retouching being a trend and yet you also point out it’s been around since the inception of photography? That’s a pretty long trend, shall I start holding my breath now and wait for it to go out of style?
I would be uncomfortable to give my full-res photographs to somebody offshore. You never know where they can end up later. Besides, isn’t retouching is a part of photography and your style these days?
I’m not worried about off-shore retouching. I’m worried that catalog and product photography will go the way of the car photographer… a dinosaur who’s lost his/her job to CGI.
I’ve “offshored” my retouching before! Only a couple of times though, because most of it I do myself. But when I’m slammed and don’t need anything too fancy, it’s always an option. Nothing wrong with it as far as I can see…if I can get a quality job done for less, I’m going to do it.
Mostly I’ve just sent batches of images that all needed basic corrections done. However as a test once I sent a fashion image that was definitely a step up in the retouch requirements. I sent the company a similar image from the shoot that I’d already retouched, and said “make it look like this”. They did…and in some ways it was a little better than the version I’d done!
My look and style rely on my retouching as well as my photography, so I don’t hire retouchers much. But I don’t care where they live, as long as they do a good job.
(Now I’m going to get flamed…)
@Marco,
“I’m not worried about off-shore retouching. I’m worried that catalog and product photography will go the way of the car photographer… a dinosaur who’s lost his/her job to CGI.”
Cars almost already have. Products are certainly on their way. I’m learning 3D and motion 3D for products specifically. After retouching and constant label and logo changing, products are essentially illustrations already. The CGI will just allow the clients to turn, tip, and rotate the products at their will. Products photography in that sense is dead dead dead. 2 more years and you’ll see very little of it.
Now one off comps are produced by shampoo and hair care products companies to match ideas and color palettes and shapes. We then take the photography and make it match the comp. In the near future, we will make the comps and the final, real-life bottles match the CGI.
From the client perspective, it’s a no brainer. They make things once in 3D and re-label it and recolor it for infinite uses. Plus, they don’t have to license the imagery anymore from photographers. One time costs and then simple changes at much lower expense.
@ matt haines
What as relief someone has good feedback here!! Matt, you’ve said exactly what almost all my samplers (initial prospects) and regular European clients really think about our work in India – but then again, I’m working with a group that has been in the ‘retouching from India’ offshore biz for over 10 years!!! …the pioneers :)
Anthony,
what you say is true. A big portion of product photography is CG already. And fashion might go the same route in a few years, when we have affordable 3D laser scanner solutions.
There is one moment I am not sure about:
“Plus, they don’t have to license the imagery anymore from photographers. One time costs and then simple changes at much lower expense.”
3D same as photography is copyrighted work. And clients have to license it, unless it’s a work for hire, or they want to purchase you copyright.
Alex
Photographers better embrace this – or certainly learn more about it. Your clients will or in some cases already have. Remember the photographers that “stood up” to RF stock (like me . . . )? This is happening with or without us.
@Timothy
i think unretouched fine art photography will always be greatly appreciated, but recording the visual truth of one moment in time is only one use of photographic technology (and a rather specific one at that). the truth is, the goals of traditional photography-as-art are not the same as the goals of graphic design. sometimes these goals overlap, but often they are at odds. commercial photographers will try to hold the torch of the traditional art-form, but advertisers are simply not going to prioritize that agenda over the goal to sell product.
not long ago advertisers relied on illustration to market products and services. then photography eclipsed illustration in popularity. i think what’s happening now is that we’re blurring the two into one category that is simply image creation. one might also argue that this is just a broader definition of illustration. either way, hybridization has always been a major path of innovation. resistance is futile, as they say.
Personally, I think it’s good that commercial photography is moving further away from traditional photography-as-art. That way there is less confusion between the two. No matter how pleasing a commercial photograph is, how often do you actually want to frame it on your wall? i’d say just about never. Even without retouching, commercial photography tries too hard to please and is too afraid to offend. It’s never going to have the noble quality of fine art, so you might as well retouch it. Just let it serve its purpose.
Some would say the distinction between fine art and commercial art is insignificant. I believe the distinction if meaningful, but that is another topic…
By the way, I’m a professional retoucher myself :)
@ Robin Huber
Very well put. I agree with you that it is the demand made by the advertisers and consumers who are hard to please and have made the photographer/ retouching artist afraid to offend… way the commecial world goes round these days…sorry
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