I'd sure appreciate it if anyone has an idea of what to charge when doing work in photoshop or doing a HDR for a client. What to charge for shooting say pictures of property and them doing a HDR image for the Client. Thanks, Conrad Rowe
I can only offer a bad approach as an object lesson. I agreed to clean up 75 photos of antique cars, ranging in size from postcards to 8 x 10s. All were to be blown up to 48 x 60 for an antique car museum, mounted on posterboard and hung up for display. My job was to get them legible at 48 x 60.
I quoted a flat rate per photo. Big mistake. Some of the photos took 10 - 20 times as long to clean up as others. Trust me when I say early Alaska photographers weren't good about dust management or sharp focus in their darkroom work. A water-damaged, sepia toned, dust-splattered, badly focused, badly processed, muddy 4 x 6 inch shot needs immense amounts of work to look halfway decent at 10X the original size. The file sizes - some of them over 100MB - made for excruciatingly slow processing. If it weren't for speed tips on PS CS4 from members of NPN, I'd probably still be grinding through the cleanups.
At the same time, an hourly rate probably isn't right for work that mostly involves waiting for waiting 15 minutes for PS to apply a smart sharpening filter to a huge image...
None of this is likely helpful, but maybe my bad example can be useful to others.
Straight HDR is rather simple in terms of added labor. If thats the only added value over a straight shot I'd only add 10%-15%. Nothing extra because that's the latest technology etc., etc. If they're coming to you because you're a professional, you're expected to have the latest technology and techniques.
I suggest that you charge a half-hour rate, with a maximum of 1 hour per image for Photo Shop work. If the time will exceed 1 hour, contact the client in advance to get their OK for the additional work.
Be sure to stipulate your requirements for images taken by the the client i.e, things like sharpness, correctable color and contrast. You'll also need to know if prints will be made, or for other uses.
If you are doing the shooting, I suggest you quote them a 'day rate'.for the shoot only. Processing would be done as I suggested above; by the half-hour.
The 'day rate' encompasses many factors. Some are; mileage, lodging, and food expense, your set up time, actual shoot time, etc. You may be able to find examples of 'day rates' on the Web as I have no idea what these rates might be.
We charge a flat hourly rate, in 15-minute increments. I.e., we might bill for 16.75 hours rather than rounding up or down. Our rate is 50% of our hourly shooting fee. We don't charge for cleaning up our own mistakes, but on jobs that require blends, HDR or anything else to achieve the final results the client wants, our bid includes both an estimate of shooting time and computer time.
Restoration work of old photos or processing anything someone else shot is billed at the same rate. You would be amazed how many weddings my wife is paid to clean up, originally shot by a "shoot and run" photographer who merely hands over a disc at the end of the ceremony. Gives us a pretty good look at our competitors' work, while building our rep and helping us derive income from their bad work. Nice!
Every commercial job is unique, so I can't give you a simple formula for success. My general guideline is $100 an hour plus expenses to make the images. If the job requires a stylist, extensive setup, or extraordinary preparation, overnight travel, etc., the price gets adjusted. I can't charge $100 an hour while I sleep 8 hours in a hotel room.
Straight graphic design work in PS or InDesign is $75 an hour.
The most difficult part of a commercial quote is understanding your client's usage of the images, and charging a fair price for that usage. Never quote unlimited use. Be real specific about the licensed usage (size, number of printings, distribution, etc.). Your local lawn care guy may become the next largest landscaping company in the US. You don't want him to be able to use the image you did for his 5000 neighborhood flyers in a national campaign with full page ads in all the home and garden type magazines, on his website, on the sides of his fleet of panel trucks, without negotiating compensation for the expanded usage.
If this is a one-off event you can probably get your brain around it without much difficulty. If it is something you are going to do regularly, you might look into fotoquote pro software to help prepare your quotes.
Discussion
5 repliesI quoted a flat rate per photo. Big mistake. Some of the photos took 10 - 20 times as long to clean up as others. Trust me when I say early Alaska photographers weren't good about dust management or sharp focus in their darkroom work. A water-damaged, sepia toned, dust-splattered, badly focused, badly processed, muddy 4 x 6 inch shot needs immense amounts of work to look halfway decent at 10X the original size. The file sizes - some of them over 100MB - made for excruciatingly slow processing. If it weren't for speed tips on PS CS4 from members of NPN, I'd probably still be grinding through the cleanups.
At the same time, an hourly rate probably isn't right for work that mostly involves waiting for waiting 15 minutes for PS to apply a smart sharpening filter to a huge image...
None of this is likely helpful, but maybe my bad example can be useful to others.
Thanks,
Rich G
I suggest that you charge a half-hour rate, with a maximum of 1 hour per image for Photo Shop work. If the time will exceed 1 hour, contact the client in advance to get their OK for the additional work.
Be sure to stipulate your requirements for images taken by the the client i.e, things like sharpness, correctable color and contrast. You'll also need to know if prints will be made, or for other uses.
If you are doing the shooting, I suggest you quote them a 'day rate'.for the shoot only. Processing would be done as I suggested above; by the half-hour.
The 'day rate' encompasses many factors. Some are; mileage, lodging, and food expense, your set up time, actual shoot time, etc. You may be able to find examples of 'day rates' on the Web as I have no idea what these rates might be.
It sounds like a good opprotunity for you.
--P
Restoration work of old photos or processing anything someone else shot is billed at the same rate. You would be amazed how many weddings my wife is paid to clean up, originally shot by a "shoot and run" photographer who merely hands over a disc at the end of the ceremony. Gives us a pretty good look at our competitors' work, while building our rep and helping us derive income from their bad work. Nice!
Straight graphic design work in PS or InDesign is $75 an hour.
The most difficult part of a commercial quote is understanding your client's usage of the images, and charging a fair price for that usage. Never quote unlimited use. Be real specific about the licensed usage (size, number of printings, distribution, etc.). Your local lawn care guy may become the next largest landscaping company in the US. You don't want him to be able to use the image you did for his 5000 neighborhood flyers in a national campaign with full page ads in all the home and garden type magazines, on his website, on the sides of his fleet of panel trucks, without negotiating compensation for the expanded usage.
If this is a one-off event you can probably get your brain around it without much difficulty. If it is something you are going to do regularly, you might look into fotoquote pro software to help prepare your quotes.