Is there a market for PS technicians?

Do you think there is a market or ever would be, should be for

technicians who are experts at PS? I know many of you enjoy learning

and applying PS yourself, just as many develop their own B&W images,

but for those who don't want to do it, in this new digital age...could

there be technicians who work as a pro lab would?

Or does this already exist at a pro lab to some extent when they

"correct" images?

I'd like to hire say a Marc Williams, send him my files, he sends them

back to me, then I send them to lab?

Sure there are. Most of the labs have people like that, but they cost a fortun. I do it quite a bit for people in the area. I do it for half the price of most pro labs around here. They're happy and I'm happy (I'm just a student, so it's good money for me).

It might help to take a look at the website of the <a href="http://www.photoshopuser.com/">National Assoc. of Photoshop Professionals.</a> They claim to have a job bank and might offer info on how to set up your business.

Thanks, I'm not really setting up any business right now. I just hate the storm cloud of having to learn PS hanging over my head and wondered about this question. However, it may be that learning PS actrually helps me in learning photography as well and is a "must"

Consider Adobe Support, and paid support services from Adobe. Also Adobe certified business partners/consultants.

Lauren, I think that photoshop skills are pretty much a requirement for the twenty-first century photographer. Even if there's a massive return to film, digitized files are a lot easier to work with than the more traditional methods of "retouching", at least if you know what you're doing. The wedding/portrait business has always been an area where customers expect "retouching".

 

As for basic density/contrast/color balance issues, I wonder why nobody seems to just use the old standby of putting a grey card, grey scale, and set of Kodak color control patches either at the edge of the frame (easy with 4x5 in the studio) or on a seperate exposure on the roll using the same lighting as for your other photograhs. The lab tech (or you) can zero in on some known standards, and everything else falls into place. Guess I'm showing my age. We used to always shoot an entire job on the same emulsion number for all the rolls of film too...LOL

Hi Lauren,

 

You could pay someone to fix your photos digitally according to the norm, but wouldn't that be boring? and expensive? After all, what's the norm? Maybe in years to come there will be more technicians for cheap, like there are now for other things. My computer connection support team operate from India because Irish people don't want to work for peanuts. I can appreciate both sides of that problem. I think you could send your photos to Stepehen Spielberg and do the same, but would that help? Rather expensive?

 

Why use a tilt shift lens with film when you can use Photoshop? becuase the lens has a point of view.

 

 

Cheers.

Having said that I would add that Al's comment above makes a great deal of sense.

 

Cheers.

Is already there and is call photo retouching, normally you can find them at big production houses, in the wedding bussines that is part of what the photographer does if they want to keep their cost down, as a good technitian is expensive.

 

As a business you can always offer the services directly to brides. If you read the post on the Knot you will always find brides that are looking for help putting albums together, and a lot of couples now choose to do their own albumsonly to return to their photographer after a while to put their albums together, and there is byg money doing just that.

Thanks Al, yes, I guess I agree they are necessary, just doing some over thinking here again instead of egtting out on this spring day and practicing so I don't need PS as much! :)

Several have mentioned that a PS skilled person who works with wedding files makes good money.

 

How do these people bill for their work?

 

How much do they make?

 

Do they bill per wedding or per image or per hour and how do they determine how far to go with the retouching? Is all that stated in the work order?

 

Anyone out there who has direct knowledge? Anyone have real life facts for Lauren ... and I'd be interested too of course.

I now have sources for post RAW production. This is the 1st stage of output if the client desires it.

 

To answer your question, yes. More so than ever tomorrow than today.

Lauren,

 

Here in AL the lowest going rate is by hour and it is $60. The average rate is about $90 an hour. That is outsourced. In-house is from $23 to $75 an hour.

 

I am sure it is much more where the cost of living is higher.

 

Ryan

Lauren -

 

AFAIAC, you do not need to be a photoshop expert at all to do photography.

 

if you can adjust curves (best to do in your RAW converter), and use the stamp clone (to do a bit of retouching), then that's good enough to start.

 

98% of my images are NEVER opened in photoshop - I shoot them in raw, make a few adjustments in Canon DPP and then convert them to JPG.

I know I would love someone to run my images through the mill. I'm not very quick, and probably not very talented at it yet. I remember seeing an ad for a women who processes your RAW images for about $0.10-15 each. The amount of time it would save me would be worth it. Not to mention not having to feed my tendonitis filled arms with more painful mousework!

 

Aaron Lee

Lauren, have you been to the Radiant Vista website. The online tutorials and videos are absolutely brilliant. Virtually all the adjustments boil down to the same few techniques. Each of them can be achieved a lot of different ways and you settle on the method you prefer.

 

A few hours at this site is worth every minute spent. Even better it's all free.

 

Link: www.radiantvista.com

 

Best wishes.

Conrad,

you wrote,

 

"98% of my images are NEVER opened in photoshop - I shoot them in raw, make a few

adjustments in Canon DPP and then convert them to JPG."

.

.

 

... But if you did, you would have a choice of changing the image and searching for

something a little better. Here is a simple example.

 

The top one is yours, presumably untouched. The lower one is after a little Photoshop

work. If nothing else, I de-fog every digital camera image, or at least test to see if it

improves it. Usually it does, but that might be just my camera.

 

Traditionally, photographic skills were learned in the field AND in the darkroom with the

latter giving the photographer time to play with the image and get to know it and take

what he learns forward. That still helps, but today it is so much easier to pick these skills

up with Photoshop.

 

IMO, dropping a prints off at a lab removes a great deal of the learning opportunity.

Therefore my advice to Lauren would be to aquire Photoshop skills as they will truly

benefit her photography. They aren't essential, but they can make a difference.<div></div>

I have a friend who is not as EXpert as some of you her and makes $45 an hour with benifets for a TV stations. He does promo for commercails and other graphics and layers. There are markets other than photography just search and think outside the box.

Cheers

Hey Lauren,

 

I like the idea of shopping PS work out to somene else. But your thinking might turn around if you were to attend a workshop like the one I was at today with Kari Douma and Dave Schilling.

 

It was insightful and it still boils down to sitting there and working with it. Ben Wilmore gave a good enough demonstration to get someone like myself up and running with a bit less intimidation.

 

I second the other posters who state that having some PS skills is an extension of todays digital photography.

My thought on this is that the process of setting aperture and dof start the manipulation process and it's up to the photographer/artist to decide when they are done using the tools in the their bag. My starter tool is the camera and the settings I tweak on the camera prior to capturing my Version of "the truth".

 

Then, depending on multiple factors, I take out some more tools and manipulate "the truth" a few more times.

 

Some times it works sometimes not... but, I do find that that people who are now looking for "something" different in the way of wedding photography want the classic pose and a lot more of an artistic flair.

Not saying everyone is looking for the this but I'm saying there's a potentially large market for it. If not, that's ok, I can give them the classic shot to as well as a photoArt version of "the truth".<div></div>

Dog gone!

 

sorry 'bout that; didn't resize,,, I'm away from my desktop and on a laptop and doing photoshop by pushing my fingers on this little pad and forgot to resize .... can't really tell if the color is right with this screen either ... oh well, it's all fun.

Lauren I can personally relate to your question because inbetween now and when I really learn photoshop what will I do with a wedding that I shoot on my own, away from where I work. There I shoot, import my images and have the printers correct and print. I will be on my own shortly and need to have someone do this until I can get the skills needed. Just today I started searching for someone that is freelancing and is in my price range until I can do it myself. I think there is definately a market. My former film photography teacher use to say "if you are in the darkroom then you are not out shooting." I can apply this to digital too. I imagine some photographers that love doing photoshop might be sooo busy shooting weddings and such that they do not have time for post production and need to hire someone.

I do freelance digital retouching not for weddings but for publishing houses and movie studios. A lot of glam shots of stars and digital compositing - take this head put it here, take this city block move it here. Depending on the client and the job I bill $60(basic things like color correction) - $150(lots of compositing- basically recreating an image from scratch) an hour. So I guess I would be considered a PS Technician and I would say yes there is a rather big market for people like me.

Thanks for all your answers. I guess the answer is that there already are and will probably be an increasing amount of PS technicians. The other answer is that as I suspected, learning PS will help in my learning photography. I know one must probably take a course in developing prints if you are in photography school. I guess PS is the dark room of the future and part of a study in photography. Wether or not a photographer later decides to develop their own prints or send them to a lab, or correct their own prints or hire a PS technician... knowing how it is done has helped them to be a better photographer.

 

Sigh... guess I have to learn PS.

 

I have my first "real" wedding in about a week. I am shooting digital and hope to learn right away with this client what the minimum adjustments I need to do are. I hope to work on learning as I go through my second second shooting season, so by the time I take on more weddings of my own, I will have "enough" knowlegde of it.

 

Had just wondered if it was a course I could graduate without!

A local photographer I deal with has neither the time or inclination to learn Photoshop. He

has an established wedding business and earns good money shooting, but has had to

adopt digital capture.

 

He gives me his chosen images and I retouch them and often plac the images in an album

using the Jorgensen Album designer, which he pays for. If there are any wedding

photographers here in exactly the same situation as him, I'm prepare dto offer that service

at $55 per hour. It's basically a days work to do well.

 

Location is of no consequence as high res files can be uploaded to an ftp server and

collected wherever and whenever convenient

 

If somebody's wedding business is being seriously held back due to their Photoshop

resource contact me off line and we'll work something out.

 

You cannot always rely on a local lab. Two days ago I had 4 800x800mm prints prepared

for an motor trade exhibition and supplied the local professsional lab with 6x7 negatives.

I called in to check their progress and ended up giving the experienced Photoshop

operator much advice.. This isn't boasting, he was using the automatic features, didn't

know how to use layers, Quick Mask, Selective colouring. His job is to crop, colour

balance and print. I was very surprised as I expected him to be fully aware of PS

capabilities.