Job Of The Day: Professional Selfie Retoucher

Do you know how to construct a perfect selfie? Can you make an image look vibrant, lively, FOMO- and envy-enducing, and — most of all — flattering? More importantly, can you take an average selfie that someone snapped off Instagram and retouch it to include all of those qualities while still hashtagging it #nofilter?

If so, you might be cut out for a freelance career in professional selfie retouching.

OK Magazine reports that Kim Kardashian works with a professional selfie retoucher:

A source tells OKMagazine.com exclusively, “Kim used to ask a friend to fix up photos, but it would take hours. She finally decided to hire a pro who can be on call 24/7.”

How much does Kim Kardashian pay this selfie retoucher?

Kim “reportedly pays the pro $100,000 a year.” And the expert “has to keep a phone on all night, in case she’s traveling.”

Since we are all, in some way or another, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, this means there are probably other professional selfie retouchers out there, or other people seeking to hire professional selfie retouchers. No celebrities in your area? Maybe you could specialize, and become, say, a professional selfie retoucher for infants. Or you could work with bridal selfies, or high school graduation selfies, or any type of selfie where we’re hoping that the memory looks slightly better than what the smartphone camera can capture.

After all, in this modern world our selfie game can be as important as our tweets, or our Facebook updates, or our resumes. As Business Insider notes:

Don’t forget, taking selfies is part of Kardashian’s business and brand. In April, she will release her book, “Selfish” — 352 pages of her selfies.

How does one “retouch” a selfie, anyway? Does the selfie subject take the selfie and send it to the retoucher, who retouches it and sends it back so the selfie subject can open the photo in Instagram and post it? Does this all have to happen within minutes, since part of selfie culture is about showing people what you are doing right now so they can look at your pictures and wish they were living your life? Does the retouching happen within a smartphone app, or are people doing this on Photoshop? I have so many questions.

If you do want to become a professional selfie retoucher, be aware that there are already plenty of people on Fiverr offering retouching skills for $5 a pic, so you’ll want to get out of that lowball market as fast as you can. Becoming a celebrity selfie retoucher is probably the way to go, unless you want to put everything you have into the Baby Selfies idea. There are a lot of babies out there taking selfies — literally, the Baby Selfie app uses cute noises to get babies to touch the smartphone screen and snap a pic — and you know those babies don’t know anything about composition or lighting.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.