You sit down on a Tuesday with a wedding from Saturday, open three quotes in three tabs, and none of them answer the question you actually have. One is a few cents per image to cull, more per image to colour, and something extra for skin. Another is in US dollars, so the number changes every time you look at it. A third says “from” and asks you to email for the real price. Meanwhile you still need to know one thing: what does it cost to get this wedding off my desk, finished?
This post walks through the ways editing is priced in the Australian market, what you actually get for each, and what we charge, in fixed AUD.
Three ways editing services price their work
Most services you will come across use one of three models. None of them is wrong. They suit different studios.
| Model | How it works | Good for | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per image, per step | A rate for culling, a rate for colour, a rate for retouching | Small sets, or studios that only want one step done | The total for a 3,000-raw wedding, and the steps you still do yourself |
| Per hour | A freelancer bills the time a wedding takes | A long-term editor who knows your style | Totals you only see after the work is done |
| Per wedding, flat | One price for a finished gallery within set limits | Studios who want a predictable cost per booking | What the limits are: image counts, revisions, retouching |
Per-image pricing looks cheapest on the page because the unit is so small. The maths changes once you multiply it across a full wedding and add the steps separately. A gallery is not one job. It is a cull, a colour pass, a consistency check across scenes, skin clean-up on close portraits and an export. If each of those is a separate line, the bill only makes sense once you have added every line together.
Hourly freelancers can be excellent, especially if you have worked with the same person for years. The catch is planning. You find out what the wedding cost after it is edited, and in a heavy month you may find out they are fully booked too.
What a finished gallery should include
Before you compare prices, compare what lands back in your Lightroom. For the price to mean anything, it should cover the whole job, not a slice of it. Ours does:
- The cull. We go through the full card, or your selects if you have already done a first pass, and keep the frames that tell the day: the key moments, the family groups, the details, the quieter in-between frames.
- The grade. Exposure, white balance, crop and colour on every image, matched to your preset and to three to five finished frames you send us.
- Consistency across scenes. Getting-ready light, a midday ceremony and a reception under festoon lights all need different adjustments. The job is making them sit together as one wedding.
- Light retouching. Skin clean-up on close portraits. Heavier work such as body reshaping or object removal across many frames is quoted separately, and we tell you before we start.
- The catalogue. You get the Lightroom catalogue or project file back, so you can change anything yourself.
- Revisions. Listed in each package, not charged as extras.
If a quote leaves out any of these, add your own time to finish it to the price.
Our prices, in fixed AUD
Every price on our Australian site is a fixed amount in Australian dollars. It does not move with the exchange rate, and the number on the page is the number on the payment link.
| Package | What you get | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Engagement gallery | 100 to 200 culled and graded images, from up to 1,000 raws, 2 revisions | A$75 |
| Wedding gallery | 300 to 500 culled and graded images, from up to 3,000 raws, up to 3 revisions | A$120 |
| Essential (gallery and highlight film) | Wedding gallery plus a 5 to 8 minute highlight film, one grade across both | A$225 |
| Signature (gallery and feature film) | Wedding gallery plus a 15 to 40 minute feature film and 1-minute teaser | A$300 |
If you shoot film as well as stills, or run a hybrid studio, the Gallery + Film packages edit both side by side so the colour on the highlight film matches the gallery your couple sees.
Add-ons are priced separately, and you choose them before we start: album design across 20 spreads is A$90, three social reels in 9:16 are A$60 and a drone-only edit is A$45.
If you send five or more projects a month, a monthly plan takes 15% off every package.
GST and currency: what we can and can’t tell you
This is the question that comes up most often, and we will be straight about it. We quote and charge fixed AUD. Whether GST applies to your purchase, and whether the reverse-charge rules for imported services matter for your studio, depends on your registration and how your business is set up. That is a question for your accountant, not for us, and any editing service that gives you a confident tax answer about your own business is guessing.
What a fixed AUD price does give you is a number you can put in your own pricing. Whatever you charge couples for a full day, you can see exactly how much of it goes on editing, and the figure doesn’t change between booking in March and delivering in May.
Turnaround and rush
Standard turnaround is 7 business days from the moment your footage link works and the brief is complete. Weekends and Australian public holidays don’t count. That holds through the whole season, October to April included.
If a couple needs their gallery sooner, rush delivery in 72 hours adds 50% to the whole order. A Wedding gallery on rush is A$180. Use it for the weddings with a real deadline, such as a couple flying out or a family event, rather than as a default.
You don’t upload anything to us. Paste a Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer, pCloud or Box link into the brief and keep it open until delivery. We confirm the brief, the price and the delivery date first, and only then send a secure card payment link.
Who does the work
Our editing team is in Pakistan, which is three to six hours behind Australia depending on your state and daylight saving. The team works in shifts around the clock, so a link is picked up soon after it arrives and questions about a brief can come back at any hour. Turnaround is still 7 business days, and a weekend upload starts the clock on the next business day. We explain the time zones in more detail in working with an editing team behind your time zone.
Everything is delivered to you, under your name. We never contact your couples and never mention who edited the work.
Try one wedding before you pay for any
The only way to know whether a price is good value is to see the edit. Your first project is free: any Gallery tier or the Highlight film, edited and delivered exactly like a paid project, with no card. Send a typical wedding, not your easiest one, so you see how we handle the light you actually shoot in.
- Start your free trial
- See every package and add-on
- How sending a project works
- Browse edited galleries and films
If you shoot through the coastal summer, read editing beach ceremonies in harsh midday sun next.