Dec 10, 2012, 14:09
It depends on what you mean by "retouching". I've worked as a digital imager for a high-end catalog company, a national prepress house and others. In Miami I was the image editor for Mira magazine and have worked on other AMI titles such as the national enquirer.
If you really want to get into doing this kind of work and set yourself apart from the people who know how to use levels and auto color, you need to learn about the different color spaces and how to color correct and edit images for their specific use. For example, an image edited for CMYK print use is going to be edited WAY differently that one that's RGB and will only be used for the web.
You have to learn to manually do everything, not rely on the auto functions of any tool. You have to learn the why of things too.
I was really lucky in that I started out as a commercial photographer and the studio I worked for went digital very early on. I had always loved macs and had played with image editing (I mean PLAYED) before all this happened so I didn't have much of a learning curve and was tasked with doing image editing as well as shooting. Eventually I got really good at it and started doing more editing for the other photographers than shooting and it just snowballed from there.
I guess to bottom line it, there are great jobs out there for digital imagers (depending on where you live) that pay really good money. There are also TONS of people who know how to adequately use the cloning tool to remove a zit and make simple selections to brighten teeth in a portrait, (plus the people outside of the US who will work for slave labor wages. You probably won't make any money trying to compete against those people, especially on the internet.
My advice to you is to go to school and learn everything you can about image editing and someone will hire you to do that. Also, if you live in a big city and can honestly say you have good basic skills in PS then contact the bigger commercial photo studios, advertising agencies and catalog houses in your city and tell them you're passionate about being a digital imager and ask if they have an apprentice position open. Be humble, be a sponge.
Let us know how it works out, you can do it!
If you really want to get into doing this kind of work and set yourself apart from the people who know how to use levels and auto color, you need to learn about the different color spaces and how to color correct and edit images for their specific use. For example, an image edited for CMYK print use is going to be edited WAY differently that one that's RGB and will only be used for the web.
You have to learn to manually do everything, not rely on the auto functions of any tool. You have to learn the why of things too.
I was really lucky in that I started out as a commercial photographer and the studio I worked for went digital very early on. I had always loved macs and had played with image editing (I mean PLAYED) before all this happened so I didn't have much of a learning curve and was tasked with doing image editing as well as shooting. Eventually I got really good at it and started doing more editing for the other photographers than shooting and it just snowballed from there.
I guess to bottom line it, there are great jobs out there for digital imagers (depending on where you live) that pay really good money. There are also TONS of people who know how to adequately use the cloning tool to remove a zit and make simple selections to brighten teeth in a portrait, (plus the people outside of the US who will work for slave labor wages. You probably won't make any money trying to compete against those people, especially on the internet.
My advice to you is to go to school and learn everything you can about image editing and someone will hire you to do that. Also, if you live in a big city and can honestly say you have good basic skills in PS then contact the bigger commercial photo studios, advertising agencies and catalog houses in your city and tell them you're passionate about being a digital imager and ask if they have an apprentice position open. Be humble, be a sponge.
Let us know how it works out, you can do it!