As we covered in the previous blog post (Part 1), finding the right retoucher can be less of a mystery when you use LinkedIn, Behance, your professional network, and you know what to look for. But that’s just the beginning - now we’ll take a high-level look at the complete process of working with retouchers.

Briefing In The Retoucher

Once you’ve aligned on availability for the project dates it’s time to give a little more detail. At this stage, the agreement hasn’t yet been made by either party, just that “We need some retouching help,” and “Yep I have availability!”

A good retoucher will meet you wherever you’re at — you may have a full-on creative deck with approved selects or loose details jotted on a sticky note, but ahead of sending those details,you need to get signed NDA before the next call or email.

Provide the details you have, the right retoucher will be able to ask questions which in a lot of cases will actually help you flesh-out areas of your brief that might be a little light on detail. They can often help you nail down and define what you didn’t know you didn’t know.

Figuring out scope & budget estimates

Start with the scope you have, don’t let it hold you up if you don’t have all the details confirmed. An example scope might look like:

“15-20 selects from the photo shoot on [date tbd], lifestyle shots with apparel in-situ, color correction, basic cleanup: model, apparel, and scene distractions. Final deliverables flat jpg and high res tif files”

From that simple outline, an experienced retoucher should be able to set you up with a budget to match. It might look like this:

“3 tiered image-rate of $250, $350, and $500 per image. Project total range = $3750 - $10000. Includes 1-2 rounds of feedback in the rate. Changes to scope of work will be determined on a case by case basis. Estimate is tbd pending review of comments, direction & image selects”

That gets you in the door, it gives you at least a framework you can take back to your stakeholders and start to look at what fits your budget. If it looks like a match, great! Ask the retoucher to pencil those dates and circle back when you get more details.

These details almost always start loose and firm up as the project gets closer. The right retoucher will know the drill. Some agencies and brands require that you have 3rd party vendors sign a scope of work contract, but often what’s been agreed upon via your emails back and forth is enough.

When everyone’s happy with the framework for budget, timeline, and scope, it’s time to get to work!

“Workback” Schedules

Once your retoucher is fully briefed and the image assets have been handed off, it’s time to look at the delivery schedule in more detail. Working back from your final deadline, start penciling dates for round 1 delivery, internal reviews, revisions, external reviews, and final delivery.

This will get you thinking about the chain of approvals, and mapping out how long each stakeholder needs to do their part of the job. Will the AD be out of town for a couple days? Does the brand client only do creative reviews on Tuesdays at 3? Are there time zone differences? What’s the expected volume of revisions and how long will your retoucher need to turn them around?

These questions should be answered and reflected in your schedule so you know if it’s realistic or not. Again, this is kind of a living document and will probably shift, but in the end you want to get internal & external stakeholders to agree: “This is how we can make this work.”

An example Workback Schedule with an agency & brand client:

3/11 - Hand off selects to retouching
3/18 - R1 delivery from retouching
3/20 - R1 feedback due from agency
3/25 - R1 update from retouching
3/27 - R2 feedback final tweaks due from agency
3/29 - R2 update from retouching
3/30 - Send for R1 brand client review
4/03 - R1 notes due from brand
4/07 - R1 update from retouching
4/13 - R2 final tweaks due from brand
4/14 - R2 updates due from retouching
4/15 - Final approval
4/16 - Final delivery

*All dates assume EOD Pacific Standard Time

Production Flow

Since the producer shepherds the work between parties and keeps it all on track, it’s important to have a tech stack that supports the retouching production flow and reduces friction.

File management & delivery

Raw files can be pretty big, and if you’re dealing with any layered files it can get even heavier. Dropbox is great because you can set up a link to allow the recipient to choose which files to download or sync, rather than everything in one go. Compared to Google Drive, WeTransfer, Box, and others Dropbox still gets my vote for features & reliability.

Image review & markup

Straight-up, verybusy.io is the only platform designed by retouchers for creative teams working with retouchers. Frame.io, Dropbox paper, Google Slides, and even Share For Review in Photoshop, aren’t - they can work, but you’ll find yourself compromising on features you wish they had. Believe me, I’ve used them all extensively.

That said, a good retoucher will meet your team where they’re at and be comfortable using whatever suits you.

Communication

Old-fashioned email still reigns supreme. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wrapped a big retouching project with over a hundred emails in a single chain. And the subject line hasn’t changed from the very first email between me and the team!

Of course, trying to dig back through that chain and find an important piece of info is a nightmare, which is where Slack comes in. Slack is pretty feature-rich and much better at managing tangential threads in a retouching project.

Timing & Rounds

It can be tough for a non-retoucher to estimate retouching timing. In fact, it’s often hard for a retoucher, but we know to always expect the unexpected so a little padding is always in the schedule. Here are some important things to know about timing in retouching:

On a project with more than a handful of images, the retouching process is non-linear; it’s much faster for the retoucher to work in stages across all the files, or in batches. So the they’ll work through all the clipping & masking, the color work, the cleanup, etc, because efficiency improves by focusing on discreet task-sets.

Round 1 delivery will take the longest, and subsequent revision rounds can be progressively shorter

If there are multiple clients, like an agency plus a brand client, we consider the first 1 or 2 rounds between the retoucher and the agency “internal”. Once they’re ready to send over to the brand client, we sort of reset to round 1. Depending on the brand client, it can be smart to schedule a little extra time to address their initial revision round than treating it like round 3.

If a new stakeholder jumps into the review process - look out! Be prepared for what I call “New-Notes”. When new eyes get on the work, it’s not uncommon to see brand-new markup that wasn’t included in the initial direction, and it can cause timing problems. Most retouchers will consider that as a material scope change and flag it as added cost, which is fair.

Consolidated feedback is the most efficient. Gathering all the comments for each review round before sending to the retoucher is better than providing them piecemeal.

Final Approval & Delivery

It’s easy to see the word APPROVED and pop the champagne. An experienced producer knows not to fall for that, there are still a few more steps.

Hopefully you’ve covered yourself by confirming early-on if simplified layered files are part of the deliverables, if there are extensions needed for weird media dimensions, or CMYK versions are needed for print.

When the final images are being delivered as part of a media kit, there can be multiple image dimensions and formats required. A final image count of 30 can easily turn into 120 file deliverables. An experienced retoucher will be well-versed in Photoshop automations and able to handle this, but it still takes time.

Build a little time into the schedule to package everything up with a bow on top and you’ll look like a pro!

Now, pop the champagne

Keeping all those plates spinning to the finish line can feel pretty good. Creative producing takes a unique blend of organizational and soft-skills, creativity and technical understanding, patience and cat-herding. A good producer is the connective tissue for a successful creative project, it falls apart without one.

And if you were working with a truly good retoucher, you should be left feeling that they worked hard to not only make all the pictures pretty, but to make your job easier in the process.