What happens when you hire a $0.25 retoucher

Just like photographers, retouchers offer a wide range of services and charge different prices. In this fun video, Irene Rudnyk decided to test out what happens when you hire photo retouchers of different rates: going from $0.25 per image. I guess you can already imagine how this will end. And yes, it’s hilarious.

Irene visited Fiverr, a website where all sorts of freelancers offer their services at affordable prices. I remember when I first discovered it, the main concept was that everything was $5, and you get to decide how much work you’ll do for $5. The concept is a bit different now, and there are a few categories of sellers, based on their ratings. You can hire a New Seller, a Level 1, Level 2, or Top Rated seller at different prices. So, Irene decided to give it a go.

When she searched for retouchers, there were 6,561 results. Irene found three of them, each at a different level:

• The Top Rated artist Irene chose had a lot of good reviews and charged $10 for one photo.
• The Level 2 artist had over 1,000 5-star reviews and charged $5 for one photo.
• The New Artist offered to retouch up to 20 images for $5. That’s $0.25 per image! They didn’t take a RAW image but wanted to get a JPEG file. This didn’t look good, but it was so amusing to see the results.

When Irene contacted the artists, she described what she wanted from the image. She wanted the retoucher to make the same changes as she did, so she can compare the end results. Two days later, the retouchers delivered their work, and Irene shares it at around 7:40 of the video.

The cheapest retoucher was the fastest to deliver the work, isn’t that nice? But, they made the model look like Fiona from Shrek. I assume this must be a troll, I just can’t take something like this seriously. Although, you never know.

The mid-range price retoucher did a much better job (which wasn’t that difficult to do). The edit wasn’t great, but not so bad either.

The most expensive artist did good skin retouch, made the photo more vibrant and made the eyes and the hair as Irene asked. However, the skin tones seem too red. In my humble opinion, the whole image looks too saturated, but it might be just a matter of taste.

Irene likes the second retouch best, as it’s the kind of “middle ground.” Also, it’s the most similar to the retouching job she did on this image.

So, photographers, if you plan to hire someone to retouch your images, I suggest you think it through. Don’t go for the cheapest option, because you’re very likely to either get trolled or just get a bunch of horribly edited photos. On the other hand, the highest price doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get exactly what you wanted. So, make sure to read the reviews, look at the sample work, and ask around before you decide.

[I Hired a Retoucher on Fiverr for $5!! |Irene Rudnyk]