Square Jaw Photography wrote:
Hello,

I have done all my retouching since I began shooting models in 2012. I use multiple tutorials and Lynda.com classes to learn, and I love doing it, but I am at a point where I'm shooting imagery that I think has potential I cannot unlock myself.

I am currently talking with a retoucher as we speak, and I intend to hire, but I'm not sure how to ask what I want done, other than "make this image phenomenal".

You should not ask for abstract things. Be specific - explain actual details, e.g. "clean up this and this", "don't touch this" etc. Also remember to show visual examples of what you want. Otherwise you are opening the door to a later discussion like "oh why did you do that, I never asked for it" or "you didn't do exactly what I wanted".

Also, the asking rate per image is more than I expected, though not surprising, I have spent hours retouching the images in my port to the quality they are,

Now you know why real post-production is estimated by the hour, not just casually by the image/genre or number of images.

and they still don't hold a candle to what I know you guys/gals can do.

That's because you learned from online tutorials and perhaps never explored further. All available learning materials and the teachers producing them are pretty much repetition of the same things over and over again. One learns from another, copies and starts selling tutorials, makes classes etc. You need to go beyond all that.

How can I convey my expectations to a retoucher?

Explain, be specific, show examples of what you want.

Does my own work leave a lot of room for improvement, or not too much.

As I have said in various threads and discussions: post-production does not have the purpose to replace photography. Everyone's work has room for improvement, even if the improvement may be just technical or for efficiency.

How much work would it take to bring the images in my port to your standard, and if you could, what do you think is an asking rate?

When you say "your standard" - what do you mean? Statistical average? There are 10k retouchers on this site (+ even more out of it) and the prevailing standard is based on tutorials and the directions of the people who make these tutorials. But there is nothing to learn from that because those teachers simply repeat what they have heard/read and resell it to infinity.

Tim Janssen wrote:
Speaking of how you can clarify your expectations. I ask the photographer to put out notes or marks on the image. Like skin blemish for example.

That would be a perfect job specification and easy to follow mechanically without much thinking but if one wants to outsource post-production they rarely look for a retouching robot. They would not waste their time to mark every single issue or blemish, so you can simply go through all of them with your brush tool. In most cases you are supposed to notice things and suggest to the client if they haven't specified.

In my experience color toning is sometimes hard to clarify.

Not at all. A single reference image can clarify it in 1 second.

I would just suggest you to make a file and give it the toning what you think is right.

Remember the client is not supposed to do the work for you. They would rather send existing reference.