For many photographers, the look and feel of their work depends as much on post-production processing as it does on their lighting and shooting technique. But how do photographers know how much to estimate for post-production expenses before a shoot? Post-production can “turn into an overly long, drawn-out process,” warns producer Scott Pratt, owner of Q.A.S. Productions. And that can cause photographers to lose money. How do you avoid it?

Photographers, reps and producers say it all boils down to understanding exactly what the client expects. That requires analyzing assignment decks and comps, and asking the right questions during creative and production calls with agency creatives.

Those questions include:

Who will be responsible for the post-production—the photographer, or the client/agency?

What level of post-production does the client expect, if the photographer is to handle it?

How many images have to be delivered at the end of the job?

What is the format, size and resolution of the image files?

How many passes (rounds of retouching revisions) does the client want?

What is the schedule for those passes, and the final delivery date?

Gregg Lhotsky, a photographer’s rep at Bernstein & Andriulli, says he always asks clients if they expect the photographer to provide an estimate for the retouching. And if the answer is yes, Lhotsky asks how much retouching the client needs. “Is it just a color pass?”—which means that the photographer takes an image or two and applies some minor color adjustments that the client’s in-house retouchers can use as a template for retouching the rest of the images—“or full-on retouching and if so, how many images?,” Lhotsky says. “We also ask for a calendar up front so the client is not sending ten images to be retouched overnight. We spell out very specifically how many images and how many passes for each image and spell out no compositing etc. prior to [the shoot].”

The post-production’s costs vary widely with the amount of retouching the client expects. Deborah Schwartz of DS Reps in Los Angeles says that when clients want basic retouching and color correction, she estimates $200 to $400 per image. Noah Webb, a Los Angeles-based photographer, says: “The fee I charge for basic clean-up can range from a few hundred [dollars per image] upwards, depending on the quantity. I usually set a flat fee for a certain quantity, say for example 15 images, and then charge an additional fee for images beyond the original agreed upon quantity.” For more extensive retouching, Webb outsources his work to a professional retoucher. Their rates are “somewhere around $150 per hour,” he notes.

Photographer Dana Hursey says he charges a “Capture and File Processing” fee on every job to cover basic color correction. “I explain that the files that come out of the camera are not the images I deliver. It takes time and effort to apply the signature look that I am known for.” But when clients need “full-on compositing, retouching and photo illustration,” Hursey says, he also outsources the work. Lisa Carney, a retoucher he’s worked with for about 25 years, helps him estimate the costs of the retouching work for his client.

Hursey explains: “We really talk the entire shoot through, front to back…not just the retouching but actually the approach we are going to take in how best to shoot the job, so that we have the best possible assets with which to build the final visuals. From there we estimate how many hours of post-production the job will take, multiply that by our hourly fee, and then add a buffer” which is usually about 15 percent.

Estimating the number of hours of post-production work is a matter of experience, Hursey says. It’s easy to underestimate at first, and lose money as a result. “We learn by doing it wrong a couple of times, and then we never get it wrong again.” (Or at least, not as wrong, or as often).

For one recent job, Hursey says a client presented a comped image of a person on a boat, going from a stormy sea into a calm sea. The client was providing the background plates: one of a calm sea, one of a stormy sea. “They were coming to us to shoot the boat and the person, and assemble the pieces,” Hursey explains.

Hursey had discussions with his producer and his retoucher about the best way to approach the job. The question was whether to shoot the boat and the person together on location, and get the shot in camera, or shoot the boat on location, and the talent in the studio, and combine the images in post.

“It’s a person standing on the bow of a boat. If we get everything in camera, that would presume we’d be on smooth ocean, on a beautiful sunny day, and [that we’ll be able to] turn the boat in just the right direction to get the light on the person in the way we want it. That’s a lot of hopes.”

They decided to shoot boat and talent separately, spending a half day shooting each. “That’s going to give us better resolution, better flexibility for scaling, and better ability to place the person on the boat where we want them to be,” Hursey explains.

Once that decision was made, Carney estimated the time it would take for compositing and retouching. Hursey explains, “She says, ‘[Boats] are a pain in the neck, because even if you shoot them pristine, there’s lots of little things you have to clean up. So that’s going to be six hours to clean up the boat.’ And she [retouches] people all day long, so she knows exactly how long it will take to clean up the person, and then to scale the person to the boat, and then marry it to the background pieces, and then unify these pieces, because they’re all going to look slightly different.” After estimating each step, Hursey adds, she also added “a couple extra hours for the unexpected.”

The estimate for post production on that one image? About $4,500. By comparison, Hursey also shoots for The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. “Sometimes we do the retouching, sometimes they take it in house,” he says. When he does the post-production, he knows from experience that it takes him three to four hours per image of computer time. He ends up charging between $500 and $650 per image for post.

On every estimate, Hursey says he includes boilerplate language specifying that “retouching includes initial marking-up and one round of revisions.” In other words, he does the retouching he thinks the image needs, sends it to the client, and then does one round of adjustments at the client’s request. Hursey explains that he learned from hard experience that unless he limits the revisions in writing, clients “keep adding and adding and adding” changes.

Producer Scott Pratt advises photographers to outsource the estimate for post-production costs to experts: “The photographer’s post house should supply the estimate,” he explained via email. “If the agency insists on [using] their post house, then let them do this step [of estimating post-production costs]and completely limit your liability.”

A post house will know what information to ask for—including the number of revisions a client is going to want, and the schedule, Pratt explains. “Be sure to discuss the timeline. This is critical. Agencies are notorious for unrealistic deadlines. Even if the deadline is ‘doable,’ it may incur a lot of overtime and even additional staff.”

To protect photographers he works for, Pratt says he does everything he can to keep the estimated post-production costs “below the line”—in other words, separate from the photographer’s production budget. “If this [post-production] line item is included in the original photography budget, it will somehow become my problem when it explodes into a cost far above my original expectations,” he explains.

He advises: “If asked to ‘include post’ in your estimate, only include a general clean-up [cost] per image above the line,” Pratt advises. “Do not add any more post above the line in the estimate. Include it below the line.” Or better yet, he says, don’t even put it below the line: Instead, submit the written estimate for post-production costs from your post-house along with your estimate for the photography production. And if possible, get the client to issue separate purchase orders to you (for the shoot) and to your retoucher.

“Especially in the case of complex post work like layers of plates and multiple composition challenges, require the agency to work directly with the post house when it comes to money,” Pratt says. That way, if the client’s job is held up in post, you’ll still get paid on time. And, Pratt adds, “when the agency sees their direct responsibility for payment to the post house, they will be more efficient and less abusive to the [post-production] process.”

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