Retouching is retouching. If you have the fundamentals, you should be able to do what you want in jewelry. It’s not that much different than anything else. Now getting good photos to work on might be a different story if you can’t shoot your own.
Peter Figen is right about photos. Getting good ones should be the first concern; The #1 tip and the #1 trick.
The better the photos, the less retouching they’ll need….
Andrea – I’m in L.A. too – on the west side. Feel free to contact me if you want.
The worse the photo is, the easire the retouching is.
We need a 20 mile zone between the client and the creative people.
I just had the dreaded "I could sit beside someone while they do the changes" call…..always seems to treble the time required….
Is that your fear, Ken?
Oh geeze I cant imagine the client sitting next to me while I did the work. That is nuts. I know I just got a nice jewelry client. I did some retouching and they seem to be happy with it. So I thought that was the deal if you can retouch you can do anything. as long as you know what the clients is wanting. I will go forward with confidence and blow them away now!!! Thanks…
I had one guy that had to sit and watch me do his CD cover it ended up costing him double because it took twice as long with him there.
I don’t mind having something sit next to me if they know what they want. I find it saves a lot of time–there is much less chance of misinterpreting what the client wants.
Right away they say: I like that color, that shadow, that sharpness, etc.
alan
Well Alan, you have way better clients that I had when I had to live through that.
Most of the time there is no one sitting there with me, but mostly as a matter of convenience – they can work at their office while I work in mine, emailing changes as needed. I have no problem with a client wanting to be there next to me, and that happens often enough. It seems to make no difference one way or another, but it can shorten the number of iterations if it’s a particularly subjective job.
but it can shorten the number of iterations if it’s a particularly subjective job.
They are all subjective and yea, they are usually all idiots.
just a thought.
Mike, this is a family forum (quoting you.)
I believe "developmentally challenged" is the proper term.
: )
This could quickly turn into the client rant thread, so… some perspective:
1.) Without clients, we would all be out of work.
2.) I can say "get management out of the creative department" all I want, but these days, it’s not going to happen. They know their way in now that we work with computers.
3.) They don’t have the wherewithal to do our jobs, or they would be doing them, so, when you can, impress the hell out of them with your work and go for that raise in pay.
and yea, they are usually all idiots.
Yes, clients can certainly be frustrating at times. And I’m sure that the designers’ forum is filled with equally passionate stories about how frustrating it is to work with prima donna photographers and pre-press people.
But no, they’re not idiots, anymore than we’re all idiots.
If you want to be a prima donna artist, then have at it and good luck on the open market where you have no one to answer to but yourself. But this subtext of "the client’s stupid" gets a little old. Being a professional and being in business mean dealing with folks who have a need and are paying you to fill that need. Don’t bite the hand.
As a wise man once said, "You can either be an energy source or an energy sink. Your choice."
I’m just curious why it took twice as long. Did the client keep changing their mind?
alan
I’m just curious why it took twice as long. Did the client keep changing their mind?
….and don’t you charge this work by-the-hour?
If I could double my retouching billings simply by having the client next to me, hell, I’d invest in a really nice Barco-Lounger for the client to sit in!
The thing is, the clients don’t have the time invested to be able to see the ‘straight line’ to reach the desired conclusion on certain projects. They need and want to go through the blind alleys and the wrong way down one-way streets that we all needed to learn about in order to set up shop as a professional. This means it adds time to the job when they want to try a way that ends up in devastation. It also adds time, but is a necessary part of the job, to guide the client past the pitfalls and the ditches they want to fall into because of their lack of experience and training.
A well-educated client is the one with whom you have taken the time to explain the why’s and wherefore’s of what is going on while you are doing the job. That client becomes better to work with because he/she is more knowledgeable because of the time you have invested to help them understand the process. Be sure to charge for ALL of your time as it is ALL valuable to the client, right along with time you spend gathering information that will help you do the job best.
Hello,
First-time poster. Thought I’d join this discussion.
I work in a pre-press department. Having the client demand to sit in on any editing or retouching is usually a sign of trouble, right from the beginning.
There are exceptions, of course. There are customers we know well who can sit in and give good, quick direction. They know what they’re doing, and they know we know our business. They don"t waste our time, and would never balk at paying for extra time.
But the typical customer who wants to "direct" photo retouching has no good preconception of his own job’s needs, anyway. He/she is poorly articulate, has little or no real understanding of printing/graphic arts, and is very demanding.
They don’t hesitate to make wholesale changes and totally unreasonable requests that border on the bizarre. Have you ever had a client expect that when you remove something in an image, that the thing it was obscuring in the original scene would then be visible?
These guys are the first ones to ask for extra (that is, free) work. "Oh, can’t you throw another picture on the page? You’ve already got the layout open!"
And they’re the last ones to pay for the time they take. Pre-press is very steeply discounted anyway, just to get the printing work, and they know it. Lots of printing houses literally give it away. It is very, very difficult, if not impossible to increase the charges, even if they take up much more time than budgeted. They don’t hesitate to talk about "taking their job down the street."
These are the guys who have no idea what they’re looking at when shown seps, and who sign off on composite proofs and progressive press pulls, but refuse the final job, insisting that the job doesn’t match the proof.
It has happened more than once that a customer who insisted on directing the preparation of images refused to pay for the time he spent with our pre-press guy. One customer who never stopped making changes said that he had to tell our guy everything about how to do his job and he wanted HIS time deducted from the printing bill! That job resulted in a physical fight in our front office between the owner and the customer.
I know when a job comes through that the customer can’t give us good, concrete instructions, or can’t understand our explanations about the needs of the job, and stay out of the shop while we work, we are going to have trouble, big time.
Rich
I know when a job comes through that the customer can’t give us good, concrete instructions, or can’t understand our explanations about the needs of the job, and stay out of the shop while we work, we are going to have trouble, big time.
In the situation described above, you have two crystal-clear choices:
1) accept the job
2) refuse the job
Simple.
If you accept the job, and, you know going in that it is going to be "trouble, big time", you again have two crystal-clear choices:
1) proceed blindly towards the big time trouble you’re anticipating
2) invest a little time (or maybe a lot of time) up front to get the customer on your side
Again, simple. And if you choose option #1, who’s stupid now?
A little client education can go a very long way. If you’re anticipating an adversarial relationship with a customer, that is what you’ll get, guaranteed. If you foresee a possible adversarial relationship and take steps to turn it into a collaborative relationship at the outset, you’re a hero and the customer becomes a client.
And why would you accept a job if the customer hasn’t given "good, concrete instructions" that you can understand? If the customer supposedly doesn’t know what they want, how do you know what they want. And, by the way, every customer knows what they want; they often just don’t know how to express it. It’s your job to ask the questions.
None of this is about pre-press or Photoshop. It’s all about how you manage your client relationships.
Energy source or energy sink. Your choice.
Rick,
I don’t get to choose who we print for. And the relationship between printing companies and customers is far more complicated than your simplistc formulas for dealing with clients.
Sure, client education really helps. Funny thing is, the ones receptive to "education" are the ones who aren’t the problem in the first case. There’s a good reason they are pros. And they teach us as much as we teach them.
We work for some really great customers, and we love to do jobs for them.
Unfortunately, it seems the majority of printing customers really are problematic. And a majority of printing jobs are exercises in, "How can we get through this mess with the least possible pain?"
If you haven’t had that experience, you haven’t been in printing too long, or you are somehow isolated from this business aspect of the situation.
Rich
Yes the client kept talking, changing this, go back to what it was before, can we try this? I just billed him for the time he wasted. He could have saved himself about $400 if he would have just let me do it. but I’m not complaining.
"I know when a job comes through that the customer can’t give us good, concrete instructions, or can’t understand our explanations about the needs of the job, and stay out of the shop while we work, we are going to have trouble, big time."
Put policies in place: An automotive shop usually has this covered by simply saying "customers are not allowed in the shop because our insurance does not cover customers in the shop. Sorry, company policy."
This is what the rep is for. The rep takes in the job, communicates with the customer, at a counter or at an office location set aside for that purpose. The rep says, when all is discussed, ‘we’ll take care of that for you’ and ‘we’ll have it ready at 3:00. The shop is generally off limits to customers, except in rare special occasions where the customer understands the process and has an issue to settle at the computer with his/her job with the provider.
There is so much to this, Rick McCleary has the other part also, which is smart judicious forethought put into how you want to handle these situations, well-planned in advance, so that you become the customer’s hero and the customer comes back for more.
What I am trying to outline briefly above is simply working out a scheme to help protect the customer from him/her self.
Rich,
In the end, all business is one-to-one. It doesn’t matter how complex the business relationship is, or how large the customer’s company is. It’s all person-to-person.
There is no doubt that there are difficult people. They’re likely dealing with issues you have no concept of – an irrational demanding boss, an impossible deadline, a ridiculous budget constraint, a hellacious homelife, who knows. And you’re the one who gets crapped on. Yeah, I understand that. But as I said before, you can deal with it in either of two ways – adversarial or collaborative. Some folks, regardless of how you try, won’t come on the collaboration ride with you. That’s life. But most of them will. All you’ve got to do is invite them.
Like I said before, if you’re looking for big trouble, you’ll definitely find it. But you already know that.
There’s another way.
"There’s another way."
no there isn’t.
: )
jest kiddn’ with you there Rick, good advice on your part.
I concur with Peter and Alan, no problem at all having the client at hand. Normally I just give the client an idea by coarsely and really fast getting the gist of what they want. That wows ’em, shows what I can and cannot achieve and gives me the direction I need, but clearly is not a finished piece of work. Then the client leaves and I flesh out the details, many of which (due to untrained eye) are things the client cannot "see" anyway, but will be seen/felt in the final image by many viewers.
It can be hours and hours on the niggling little details, and what client really wants to sit around get bored out of their minds with that. Of course, that’s another reason I have the Panasonic massage chair in the studio…
one of my colleagues saved a diamond project by convincing the customer that he was a cutter in a previous life
"Put policies in place: An automotive shop usually has this covered by simply saying "customers are not allowed in the shop because our insurance does not cover customers in the shop. Sorry, company policy." "
I think you are missing part of the metaphor here. Someone doesn’t necessarily drive their car into the shop and say "it doesn’t work", I’ll be back later to pick it up.
Often to get the car fixed faster aqnd the problem diagnosed the mechanic and the car owner will take a drive in the car and then the car owner might say "yes, thats the sound I’m talking about", or "that engine stutter that just happened, that is what I was trying to explain but couldn’t, I’m glad we took this test drive".
Just as with photoshop a lot of time can be saved. You need to know when and where and what.
alan
Often to get the car fixed faster aqnd the problem diagnosed the mechanic and the car owner will take a drive in the car
That’s what the front counter is for. Customers don’t have to be watching you do the work, but they can discuss it with you there.
Which brings us to the part of the metaphor most people here seem to miss. When I had to endure working with the customer looking over my shoulder, I was an employee. I got extra aggravation and no extra benefits…
It really depends on the nature of the relationship you have with your clients. In my case, it’s generally long term repeat clients who, if they’re sitting there with me, doen’t matter too much one way or another. Usually I just don’t want to bore them by making them watch me draw a path, but sometimes, especially in the case of certain musicians, it helps having their immediate input. If, on the other hand, I was working in a photo lab or a prepress house, I might feel a bit differently.
I really don’t care either. I they waste my time they are paying for it.
Most people I work with trust me to do the job and I don’t need them there. If I need them they come over.
Phew!, I guess I’m lucky. I like my clients. When we work together its fun most of the time. They bring me coffee, stuff to each. One of them gave me a Apple Store gift card in appreciation of the work I did for them that they seemed to like.
I enjoy working with creative people. One of my clients (of whom I give a big big discounts because I like the work so much) is a great modern artist that can’t do the technical things that I can do so essentially he is the brains and I’m the talented (so I like to believe) hands. We could never produce the stuff we do if he just left me notes on the front counter. Sometimes instead of money I accept artwork. It all works for me.
Clients have to be flexible and vendors do as well.
alan
If, on the other hand, I was working in a photo lab or a prepress house, I might feel a bit differently.
Exactly the situation I was in.
That being said, when I’m the one who presents the bill, it’s way more motivating to sit with the client <g> (then again, most of my customers are halfway accross the country for some reason, so I’m used to doing everything of the phone and e-mail)
"An expert is someone who can do for a dime, what any fool can do for a dollar"
I find that some clients are helpful and some are not…..some just want to ‘micro-manage’, some want to contribute, I have no problem with the latter but the former make me feel like a dog on a leash….I can’t work at full capacity because they break my concentration.
Our prepress cannot charge enough for this type of thing and still be competitive, the extra work is inevitably shared across the whole client base, in the end they all come out better off.
Dont you all get the odd problem job and absorb the extra time? Could be client hassles, software hassles, ‘blonde’ moments…..I see plenty of them reported here and I bet most of them arent charged at full rate…..
"some just want to ‘micro-manage’, some want to contribute, I have no problem with the latter but the former make me feel like a dog on a leash"
Well put.
At my automotive shop they will let a mechanic go out for a ride in a car to hear a sound, but once that is completed, the car goes back in the shop for repair, not the customer.
Part of it is physical logistics. If you have a room, and the room is both the meeting place and the place where you do your work, it might be hard to separate the areas and not have the client at your work area while you are working.
