Another studio had me come in for a full day after an initial interview. I was given three images; the first was a full retouched image with masks to color match to a similar looking reference. I noticed that the masks were not fully correct in that the liquify had not been applied to them, not sure if that was part of the test or not, but I’m thorough so I fixed them and proceeded with the color matching. The second image was a three-part hair composite. I spent most of my day on this one. The last image was a beauty shot that was from a film scan, which really shows how well the tester does with retaining texture since the grain is baked in. I liked that they had me in for the whole day, that way both the studio and I could have a sense of whether or not we’d be a good culture fit.

Another more boutique-y studio sent me a link to test files that I was to complete on my own time. It consisted of a product shot with the request of removing deco (the logos and type that are printed on the product), an editorial fashion image with specific shaping requests and color looks, a small section of a celebrity beauty portrait, and a four-piece composite.

The largest and most well known studio wanted me to come in for four hours initially, but at the interview I let it be known that I had the entire day to devote to the test, so they threw two additional images at me for a combined six hour test. The first two images, the ‘senior’ portion of the test, was strictly color matching a physically retouched and masked file to a fully color graded reference image from the same campaign. Skin, clothing, backgrounds, hair, jewelry; very intense. The ‘bonus’ images were an editorial fashion image with specific markups to tailor the clothing and change product colors to a specific pantone chip, along with standard skin and background clean up, and a beauty image. In hindsight, I probably should have only done the senior portion of the test, the other two images were hastily done.