What should you charge to fix a customer's artwork?
Artwork prep is billable time that most shops absorb into the print price. Pricing it does not mean guessing what a fix is worth; it means naming the operations the file needs, timing them, and multiplying by a rate. Against a freelance designer hour of $20-26, every repair below has a known cost — and most of them are smaller than shops expect.
| Reference rate, freelance artwork prep | $20-26 per hour — the band this page prices from |
|---|---|
| One minute at that rate | $0.33-0.43 |
| Measure the file and write the reply | 3-5 min · $1.00-2.17 |
| Background removal, hard clean edge | 5-10 min · $1.67-4.33 |
| Background removal, hair, fur or soft edge | 25-45 min · $8.33-19.50 |
| Halo and JPEG edge cleanup | 8-15 min · $2.67-6.50 |
| Vectorising a two-colour logo | 15-25 min · $5.00-10.83 |
| Vectorising a detailed illustration | 60-120 min · $20.00-52.00 |
| Re-setting logo text after matching the font | 20-40 min · $6.67-17.33 |
| Floor that covers quoting, invoicing and the reply | 15 min · $5.00-6.50 |
Price the minutes, not the file
Two logos that look equally broken in a thumbnail can be eight minutes apart or ninety minutes apart, and nothing on screen says which. The rate is fixed, so the estimate comes from listing the operations the file needs and adding their times. A quote built that way survives being questioned, because every line in it is a task rather than an impression.
- Under 10 minutes — edge cleanup, halo removal, one flat background
- 15-45 minutes — vectorising a simple mark, matching a font, rebuilding a soft edge
- Over 60 minutes — redrawing an illustration, quoted as a design job rather than prep
Set a floor, and set a stop
The floor exists because quoting, invoicing and answering the follow-up message cost the same whether the work took two minutes or twenty. The stop exists because there is a point past which the repair costs more than the order carries, and a shop that crosses it silently is paying to keep a job it is losing money on.
- Below the 15-minute floor, one flat minimum replaces an itemised quote
- Past 45 minutes on a raster logo, asking for the vector is cheaper than rebuilding it
- Once the estimate passes the margin on the order, it is quoted separately and approved before it starts
Free is a decision, not a habit
Some repairs are worth absorbing, and the reason is arithmetic rather than goodwill: a two-minute correction that prevents a reprint returns several times its cost. The same argument does not reach a forty-minute rebuild. A shop that never draws the line ends up running a design studio at print prices, and the customers whose files were clean are the ones paying for it.
- Under 5 minutes for a returning customer — absorbed, and named on the order so it stays visible
- Any repair that removes a reprint from the schedule — absorbed, because the reprint costs more
- First order, 30 minutes or more — quoted, because the relationship has not paid for it yet
The fee goes on the order before the work starts
A prep fee added after the file is fixed reads as a surprise, and the conversation that follows costs more than the fee did. Written into the quote with the operation named and its time attached, the same amount is a line the customer approved. What changes the outcome is the order of events, not the number.
What the system contributes here
The pipeline measures the file, names the operations it can carry out, applies the ones whose result can be verified afterwards and stops on the ones it cannot. What comes back is a list of operations with evidence attached to each — the input a quote is assembled from. The rate stays the shop's decision; the system supplies the measurement, not the price.
FAQ
- Should artwork fixes be free?
- Below a few minutes, absorbing the cost is usually cheaper than explaining a small charge. Past the floor above, free prep is a discount taken out of the print margin, and it grows with every customer who learns the shop does it.
- A competitor advertises free artwork fixes.
- So does every shop that has priced the fix into the print. The question is where the cost sits, not whether it exists — a shop hiding it in the unit price is charging the customers whose files were fine for the ones whose files were not.
- What is charged when the repair fails?
- Work that is not delivered is not billed. The measurement showing why the result could not be verified is still worth sending, because it is what the customer needs in order to supply a file that works.