Question for the professionals

[RexK_Cozumel]

On my final images I will have everything that needs to be done finished. This means that if I feel the image will be better with facial contouring and skin retouching then i will do that. The client chose me for a reason. They have seen my portfolio. If they do not like what they see then they should not hire me. They should also have a pretty darn good idea of what the photos will look like when finished based on the portfolio. I would never turn over a photo to a client that I felt was unfinished. Nor would I ever put a photo into my official portfolio that I felt needed more work.

So for the proofs I just do very basic edits so 1) I can get them to the client quickly for their choices and 2) I do not waste 100+ hours of work retouching images that the client does not like/want.

When I shoot with a model I will shoot around 50 some odd frames per outfit. This is in a semi controlled shoot sometimes when I am shooting something that involves factors that I can not control I will shoot way more than this. On average it takes me 2 hours to retouch a photo. Sometimes as little as 30 minutes sometimes as long as 8+ hours just depends on the image. Very rarely do I shoot a model with out changing locations/outfits. So on a shoot I might end up with 200+ shots. Ok out of the 200 shots I will typically edit out about 50% of them for whatever reason. Subject blinked, pose doesn't look good, focus is not good etc. So those 100 images that I am left with will get batch edited and that is what I let them see as proofs. I will tell them that the images are not complete and that they will not look exactly the same as they do here when finished but basically they should be looking for what poses they like the best, lighting, composition etc. cause stuff like that is not going to change from the proof to the final image. I will tell them to pick 1 or 2 photos from each look. If the model is really cool then maybe more but generally no more than 4 images from a single look. So I end up retouching about 4-6 images which translates to about 8-12 hours of work. a lot better than the 200 hours it would take me if I did all the proofs.

And this is in a controlled shoot where you dont have to shoot thousands of frames. I can't even imagine doing full retouching to all the proofs for a wedding... I would charge what Gary Fong charges...

[Cliffs]

What programs do you "pros" use?

I highlighted "pros" because I'm not even in that league.