Retouching at catalogue volume, to a written spec

AED 8 to AED 250 per image covers most of what we are asked to build. The number moves on the complexity of the work. Simple background removal and colour correction sits at the low end and falls further at volume. Ghost mannequin, difficult clipping such as hair or glass, and detailed beauty retouching sit at the high end. Anything quoted before those are known is a guess. We scope first, then price, and the scope document is yours whether or not you proceed. These are market ranges rather than a fixed rate card — the proposal carries the real figure.

Because retouching covers work that takes ninety seconds and work that takes two hours. A clean product shot needing background removal and a colour check is at one end. A beauty image with detailed skin work, or a glass product needing careful masking and reflection reconstruction, is at the other. Volume brings the per-image cost down substantially on repetitive categories.

Considerably, and it is worth saying plainly. Consistent lighting, correct exposure and a colour chart in the first frame of each set can halve retouching time. If you shoot in-house we will give you a short shooting specification that pays for itself immediately.

A written specification agreed on a test batch first, then batch processing built from it, then a human check on every image. The specification is the deliverable that makes it repeatable, and you keep it — it works with any supplier.

It depends on volume and complexity and it is committed in writing per batch rather than estimated. For ongoing catalogue work we agree a standing turnaround so your ecommerce team can plan launches around it, which is usually the thing that actually matters.

Yes, for Amazon, Noon and the other regional platforms. Their rules on background, product fill percentage, dimensions and what may appear in a main image are specific and they change. We check before delivery rather than after a bulk rejection.

Yes, and doing both is usually cheaper overall because we shoot to a specification we then retouch to. Where you already have a photographer, we work to their files and will give them a short brief that reduces the retouching needed.

Restrained by default, keeping texture. We use frequency separation so blemishes go without the skin turning plastic. If you want more, we will do it and we will flag where we think it starts to look untrue, particularly for beauty and aesthetics clients where customers are comparing the image to a real outcome.

Yes. It needs the garment photographed in two or three passes on the day, so it is worth agreeing before the shoot rather than after. Retrofitting it from a single mannequin shot is possible and considerably more expensive.

For some mechanical steps, yes — background removal on simple shapes, upscaling, initial masking. They are fast and they are unreliable on hair, glass, mesh and fine detail, which is exactly where catalogue images get rejected. A person checks every image regardless of how it was processed.

It is not an established photographic principle, and it is worth saying so rather than inventing a definition. It appears in search suggestions because content sites have written about it, and the articles doing so define it in incompatible ways — some as a composition split, some as a workflow split. No professional photographer or retoucher we know works to it. If someone quotes it to you as a standard, ask which version they mean.

Yes. Send ten representative images including your most difficult category and we will retouch them to a draft specification at no charge. It is the fastest way for both sides to find out whether the standard and the volume work.

Because the term attracts three different audiences at once: businesses looking for a supplier, freelancers looking for work, and people looking for a job. Upwork and Indeed both rank on the Dubai version of it. Worth knowing when you compare quotes, because a freelancer rate and an agency rate are not comparable — the difference is usually the written specification, the quality checking and the committed turnaround rather than the retouching itself.

You do, and that is deliberate. It describes your standard, not our process, so you can hand it to another supplier or take the work in-house. A specification that only we can read would be a way of making you dependent, which is not a good reason to be kept.

Say so and we will quote a rush rate rather than quietly deprioritising something else. What we will not do is commit to a turnaround we cannot hold, because an ecommerce team planning a launch around an optimistic promise is worse off than one planning around an honest one.

Colour accuracy does, and it is the part of this work with the clearest commercial return. When the product on screen does not match the product in the box, the customer sends it back and the cost of that dwarfs the retouching. It is why we work to colour targets rather than to what looks appealing on a screen.

Review the grid, not the individual image. A category page shown at thumbnail size reveals inconsistency in background, shadow direction and crop margin immediately, and those are the faults customers actually notice. Checking images one at a time in isolation hides exactly the problem you are looking for.