Photo Retouching Prices in Japan: 15 Services Compared (2026)

Hi, I'm Tsubasa.

When I lined up the rates of 15 photo retouching services in Japan, the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive option for a portrait was more than tenfold. Some charge per spot — ¥100 to remove a single blemish. Others charge per person, per image, or won't publish rates at all. The pricing structures are so different that a simple side-by-side comparison is impossible unless someone normalizes the data first.

That's what this article does. I've gathered the published rates of 15 Japanese retouching and photo-editing services into one page. The short answer: portrait (skin) retouching in Japan mostly falls in the ¥1,000–6,000 per image range, background removal costs tens to hundreds of yen per image, and complex object removal (power lines, etc.) is quoted case by case, typically from a few thousand to tens of thousands of yen.

If background removal is all you need, a separate article covers 11 cutout specialists starting at ¥19 per image: "背景切り抜き・白抜きの代行・外注費用相場｜1枚19円〜11社比較" (Japanese).

All prices in this article are the rates published on each company's official website as of March 2026. Prices change, so confirm the latest figures on the official sites. Note that many services price web-use images and large-format print images differently.

Retouching Rates in Japan by Task Type

Photo retouching costs vary widely depending on the type of work. Knowing the going rate for each task before requesting a quote makes the quote much easier to judge.

Price Comparison Table: 15 Retouching Services

The table below lists 15 services that handle portrait retouching, sorted from cheapest to most expensive. "Quote only" means no rates are published on the official site. All figures are from official websites as of March 2026.

Notes: "Case by case" for individual clients means the service is corporate-leaning but may accept individual orders on inquiry. Per-spot services (BELLEFOTO, Remage, etc.) get more expensive as the number of fixes grows; per-person services usually include full-face correction in the flat rate. Retouch Ink's rates are the guide figures published on its operator's blog "Retouch Info" — actual pricing is by individual quote. Tokyo Retouch's rates are the guide figures published in its official column — actual pricing is by individual quote. MARVELOUS DESIGN offers a 50-image pack (¥110,000 = ¥2,200/image). Camera no Kitamura's figures are for ID-photo retouching (tax incl.), with finish time varying by plan.

Price is only one axis. I've also compared nine of Japan's retouching companies on corporate foundations — founding year, registered capital, headcount, and whether they publicly name clients: "How Japanese Corporations Evaluate Photo Retouching Companies — A Corporate Foundation Checklist". For B2B outsourcing, that comparison matters as much as the rates.

Service Profiles

BELLEFOTO — Operated by Sanei Process Inc. (founded 1968, capital ¥12 million, ~100 employees), a prepress company with over 50 years in publishing and printing. Around 100 staff work in 24-hour shifts, so high-volume jobs are feasible. You can choose between per-spot fixes (from ¥500/spot) and full-face retouching (from ¥3,000/person), which makes cost control easy: per-spot when there's little to fix, full-face when there's a lot. Beyond portraits, they handle architecture, product, and food retouching. Full-face retouching comes in a soft (natural skin) and hard (heavily beautified) finish, and you can supply sample photos to communicate the target look. Individual clients are accepted from a single image. Retouching is not the core business — prepress, DTP, and printing are — and BELLEFOTO is a service built on the company's image-processing expertise.

Remage — Itemized per-spot pricing from ¥550: blemish removal ¥550, wrinkle removal ¥550, eye enlargement ¥550, lifting the corners of the mouth ¥550, and so on. There is no flat per-image plan, so a few fixes stay cheap while a full-face overhaul can exceed what flat-rate services charge. Volume discounts apply from ¥50,000 (3%), ¥100,000 (5%), and ¥150,000 (10%). An express option (+50%) shortens turnaround. Revisions are free up to two rounds, ¥550 per round after that. Run by a sole proprietor in Shinagawa, Tokyo, specializing in photo correction, compositing, and editing. A retouching-only operation.

Motto — Low-cost per-spot menu: mole/blemish/spot removal from ¥100 per spot, wrinkle removal from ¥300 per spot, and a facial cleanup bundle (all blemishes and spots on the face) for ¥600. Operating since 2011, with pay-after-approval billing. Delivery in as little as 3 hours has been achieved. Also handles memorial portraits (iei) and passport photos, covering a wide range of individual use cases. Orders go through a web form with photo upload and menu selection; credit cards and web money are accepted. Operated by ADAPT Inc. (Shibuya, Tokyo; capital ¥3 million). Not a retouching-only company — it also runs printing, frame procurement, and web services — but its client list includes King Records, Kodansha, Recruit, and BEAMS.

Graphic Factory — Per-spot pricing: spot/blemish/mole removal from ¥100 per spot, skin smoothing from ¥1,000 per spot, and a full wrinkle-removal set around ¥2,200. Reception runs 11:00–22:00, later than most, and a rush plan delivers in as little as 1 hour. Discounts apply from 5 images. The menu covers detailed facial edits — double-eyelid processing (~¥2,000), eye enlargement (from ¥1,000), makeup retouching (from ¥700 per spot) — and ranges from snapshots to ID photos and memorial portraits. Run by a sole proprietor specializing in photo correction. A retouching-only operation.

Syazou no Takumi — Package pricing: standard portrait set ¥2,000/person, full facial retouch ¥3,000/person, job-hunting photo set ¥4,800/person. Individual menu items can be ordered without a package, but a ¥1,000 initiation fee applies. The itemized menu is granular: mole/blemish removal ¥100 per spot, nasolabial fold removal ¥300, teeth whitening ¥300, eye enlargement ¥500, digital orthodontics ¥1,800, and more. Person cutouts run ¥1,800/person. Unusual menu items include expression changes (¥1,000) and opening closed eyes (¥1,000). No corporate information is published on the site; the operator describes the business as "photo editing and CG processing."

Studio Koubou — A corporate-only service specializing in wedding photography retouching, built for photo studios and wedding venues; orders from couples themselves are not accepted. The standard plan (¥1,200/image) is a no-instruction-needed portrait cleanup covering skin blemishes, freckles, spots, acne, and wrinkles. The high-grade plan (¥3,000–5,000/image) is made to order and extends to body-shape and facial-contour correction. Volume discounts are available. The service is designed for batch orders from wedding studios and venues. Operated by bloom Inc. (founded 2014, capital ¥10 million, ~50 staff), a company specializing in photo retouching that also runs Tokyo Retouch.

Tokyo Retouch — A corporate-only retouching company specializing in Japan's entertainment industry. It has ongoing contracts with major publishers and a major e-commerce company, and comes up frequently as "the vendor large companies actually use." Around 50 retouchers are on staff, enabling high-volume jobs on short deadlines. A multi-person workflow with systematized quality control addresses the problem corporate clients often face with freelancers: inconsistent output. The company handles entertainment merchandise — bromides, acrylic stands, photo books — where deliverables must clear talent-agency review. Pricing is by individual quote; the company's official column states most jobs land in the ¥1,000–4,000 range, with the exact rate depending on work content, volume, and usage size. Operated by bloom Inc. (founded 2014, capital ¥10 million, ~50 staff), which also runs Studio Koubou.

Camera no Kitamura — A nationwide camera-store chain where ID-photo retouching can be ordered over the counter. Five tiers: standard with no retouching (¥2,380), auto-retouch "Bihada Plus" (¥2,980), auto-retouch "Inshou Up" (¥3,680), hand-retouched "Kodawari" (¥5,680), and hand-retouched "Pro" (¥9,980). The hand-retouched tiers cover blemish removal, lifting mouth corners, and adjusting eye openness. In-store pickup takes as little as 10 minutes to an hour, no reservation needed, which suits job-hunting, career-change, and My Number card photos. Operated by Kitamura Co., Ltd. (founded 1943), whose core business is camera retail and photo printing; retouching is an add-on to its ID-photo service.

MARVELOUS DESIGN — Founded 2014, operated by one stand cross Inc. (incorporated 2016, Kawasaki). Three intensity tiers: soft (¥2,750 — natural skin, color, face, and body correction), medium (¥3,850 — adds hair-color changes and tattoo removal), hard (¥5,500 — dramatic face and body reshaping). The 24-hour express option costs 1.2× the standard rate. A 50-image pack runs ¥110,000 (¥2,200/image). The service also offers cosplay retouching with background compositing (from ¥11,000), plus memorial, ID, and bridal photo retouching. Not retouching-only: the company also produces real-estate floor plans and advertising.

ASOBOAD — Two plans, tax included: basic (¥2,750 — red-eye, blemish and skin-damage fixes, skin smoothing, teeth whitening, color correction, resizing, background cleanup, stray-hair removal, solid-color background replacement, background blur, makeup improvement) and advanced (¥5,500 — everything in basic plus advanced skin work, orthodontic-appliance removal, object removal, lens-reflection removal, clothing-color changes, clothing-wrinkle removal, background replacement, dodging, and face-line adjustment). Operated by AMIX, a design studio in Osaka run by a sole proprietor (opened 2015). Advertising design — flyers, posters, logos, packaging — is the core business; retouching is one menu item.

AZLINK — Body retouching from ¥3,300/person and face/portrait retouching from ¥6,600/person, tax included. The studio's strength is compositing: published examples include illustration composited onto costumes, plastic models rendered to look like real vehicles, and AI-generated backgrounds combined with photos. They've also handled projects from concept proposal through shoot supervision. Corporate-leaning, but individual orders may be possible on inquiry. Operated by Aslink Ltd. (founded 2001, Nagoya), whose main business is web production, systems, and app development; an in-house retouching unit is staffed by a photo-studio-trained retoucher.

Retouch Ink — General retouching at ¥4,000–12,000/person and advertising retouching from ¥50,000/person. Background cutouts start at ¥1,000 — considerably higher than cutout specialists — and black-and-white photo colorization is also offered. No rate card is published on the official site; the guide figures appear on the operator's blog "Retouch Info." Operated by Yojigen LLC (Ginza, Tokyo; founded 2023; capital ¥100,000). The official company profile lists its business as "AI development and photo editing" — it is not a retouching-only company. Its corporate site (yojigen.llc) lists photo retouching alongside development of a YouTube video-production AI tool and mobile apps (a language-learning app and a children's literacy app). The colorization page links to a YouTube channel, "AIで蘇る戦争の記憶" (Wartime Memories Revived by AI), which publishes AI-colorized wartime photographs. With a staff of eight (including non-regular employees and an overseas office), the company operates across photo retouching, AI development, YouTube channel management, and app development.

Retouch no Pro — Portrait-focused, three plans, tax included, per person: light (¥5,500 — color correction, skin work, eye/nose/mouth adjustment), standard (¥8,800 — adds whitening and face-line adjustment), premium (¥11,000 — adds makeup processing and body-line correction). Two people in one photo means two people's worth of fees. Also handles building and product retouching and design work; accepts individual and corporate orders from a single image. Operated by Maxent Inc. (formerly Mad Graphic; founded 2008, incorporated 2018, Shibuya, Tokyo), which also does graphic design, advertising, video, signage, photography, web production, and Live2D animation.

Picnico — From ¥5,500/person, tax included. Run by an independent web-design studio based in Tokyo and Fukuoka. Orders of five or more images get 10% off. Web design is the core business; retouching is a service line. Corporate-leaning, but individual orders may be possible on inquiry. Photography-only requests are not accepted.

Hito Photo — A portrait-specialized service operated by Frencel Inc. (founded 2001, capital ¥40 million, 43 staff, Sapporo). Three plans: face plan (¥8,000, ¥8,800 tax incl. — full facial correction), total plan (¥10,000, ¥11,000 tax incl. — full body), and a custom quote plan for pinpoint fixes. Work is done by hand by experienced retouchers with an emphasis on natural results. A toll-free line (0120-695-303) handles inquiries, 9:30–18:30 on weekdays. The same company runs Kirinuki PHOTO, so cutouts and retouching can be ordered together. Frencel is a broad design company — web production, UI design, accessibility audits, character design, IP, branding, product design — with image processing handled by its longest-running division.

Per-Spot vs. Per-Person: Japanese Retouching Services Count Prices Differently

The single most confusing thing about comparing retouching quotes in Japan is that services count differently: "per spot," "per person," or "per image." A flat comparison across those units doesn't work.

Per-spot services (BELLEFOTO, Remage, Motto, Syazou no Takumi's itemized menu) charge for each fix. Removing one blemish costs a few hundred yen, but fixing every spot, wrinkle, and dull area on a face adds up to several thousand. The total depends on the photo's condition, so you need to pin down "how many spots" at the quoting stage.

Per-person services (Syazou no Takumi's packages, MARVELOUS DESIGN, ASOBOAD, Retouch no Pro, Hito Photo) charge a flat rate per person that covers full-face correction. Since more fixes don't cost more, they can come out cheaper for photos needing a lot of work.

A concrete example: for "5 blemishes + 3 wrinkles + dullness correction," per-spot BELLEFOTO runs ¥500 × 8 spots = from ¥4,000, while per-person MARVELOUS DESIGN covers the whole face with its ¥2,750 soft plan. Flip the case — one blemish only — and BELLEFOTO's ¥500 beats MARVELOUS DESIGN's ¥2,750. When comparing quotes, always confirm what's included at that price.

Five Factors That Move Japanese Retouching Prices

The same "one portrait retouch" can cost anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand yen. Five factors explain the spread.

• Complexity of the work. Simple color correction, body-shape correction, and complex compositing involve completely different amounts of labor. The same word "retouching" can mean a several-fold difference in unit price.
• Volume. Bulk orders tend to lower the unit price. MARVELOUS DESIGN's 50-image pack (¥110,000 = ¥2,200/image) is one example; Remage's tiered volume discounts (3% over ¥50,000, 5% over ¥100,000, 10% over ¥150,000) are another.
• Deadline. Rush jobs usually incur express fees. Ordering with time to spare is the cheapest lever there is.
• Usage size and medium. Web-use images and large-format print (posters, catalogs) demand different precision. Print work at 350dpi and above exposes flaws, requires more careful work, and costs more. State the intended use and size when ordering.
• Continuity. Some services discount monthly contracts or repeat orders. If your EC operation needs a steady monthly volume of product images, it's worth negotiating.

Tokyo Retouch's official column also explains that quotes depend on multiple variables — work content, volume, deadline, budget — which is why a single universal market rate is hard to state.

How to Keep Retouching Costs Down

• Handle simple fixes with smartphone apps. Brightness and light color correction are free in Snapseed or Lightroom Mobile. Reserve paid orders for work you can't do yourself.
• Use cutout specialists for cutout-only jobs. If background removal is all you need, cutout-specialized services cost far less than retouching services. Eleven of them are compared (from ¥19/image) in the Japanese-language article "背景切り抜き・白抜きの代行・外注費用相場".
• Test-order before committing. Before a large batch, try 1–3 images to confirm quality and turnaround. If it doesn't work out, the damage is small.
• Batch photos with the same tendency. One unified instruction ("this series runs dark, raise the contrast") for a batch cuts back-and-forth, time, and cost.

How Volume Discounts Actually Work

Volume discounts exist, but the mechanics differ widely by service. One thing to note: almost no service offers stepwise unit-price reductions for small orders (a few to a few dozen images). Volume discounts generally assume genuinely large orders — on the order of 1,000 images — such as monthly EC product-image processing in the hundreds or thousands, where services offer individual quotes or dedicated plans.

Pricing Small Orders

For a few to a few dozen images, budget at each service's list price without assuming a discount. Some services offer monthly plans or repeat-order discounts, so ask in advance if you'll order regularly.

A Checklist for Not Losing Money on Quotes

Confirm these before accepting a retouching quote:

• Scope of the base rate. Skin correction only, or body-shape correction too?
• Conditions for surcharges. What happens if difficulty turns out higher than expected mid-job?
• Express fees. Whether they exist and how much.
• Delivery format. Extra fees for formats beyond JPEG (PNG, PSD, TIFF)?
• Cancellation policy. Fees for cancelling after work begins?

Hidden Costs That Quotes Don't Show

Comparing on unit price alone can leave you paying more in total. Two more things to check:

• Option surcharges. Whether body correction, background processing, and color correction are included or billed separately. "Portrait retouching" doesn't always include body work or wrinkle removal.
• Rework cost from bad quality. If the deliverable is unusable, re-ordering elsewhere costs time and money. A test order before the real batch avoids this.

Get Quotes from Multiple Vendors

Because rates vary this much, get quotes from at least two or three services — using the same image and the same work specification so the numbers are actually comparable. Judge responsiveness and deadline reliability alongside price.

Corporate and High-Volume Retouching in Japan

Apparel companies on EC marketplaces and catalog producers that generate hundreds to thousands of retouching jobs a month don't use individual-facing services. They outsource to corporate-specialized retouching companies, for a simple reason: processing large image volumes on short deadlines while keeping quality uniform requires a dedicated structure.

The defining trait of corporate retouching companies is multiple retouchers working to internal regulations. Output stays consistent when the assigned person changes because quality control is systematized. Compared with placing individual orders with freelancers, the per-image price tends to be higher — but once you count the hidden costs of retakes and quality checks, the total can flip in the corporate vendor's favor.

The flip side: corporate services often set minimum lots or monthly contracts and don't suit individuals ordering a few images. For individual orders, Remage, BELLEFOTO, and Graphic Factory are the realistic options.

One misconception worth correcting: "no published rate card = expensive" is wrong. In B2B work, the optimal unit price genuinely changes with volume, work content, and deadline, which forces case-by-case quoting. Services that publish rate cards usually price for small orders; for corporate clients sending real volume, quote-based companies can end up cheaper per image.

Rush Retouching in Japan: Who Can Deliver Tomorrow

"We need it by tomorrow" jobs fail if you pick the wrong vendor. Standard turnaround is 3–5 business days, and plenty of services don't take rush work at all.

There are three realistic options for rush jobs. First, services with explicit same-day or next-day delivery: Motto has delivered in as little as 3 hours, Graphic Factory has a 1-hour rush plan, and MARVELOUS DESIGN's express option delivers within 24 hours at 1.2× the standard rate. Second, freelance retouchers — but whether an individual is available depends entirely on timing. Third, in-store services like Camera no Kitamura, where ID-photo retouching can be picked up in as little as 10 minutes.

That covers a handful of images. Hundreds or thousands of portrait images on a short deadline is a different problem entirely: finishing one image in a few hours and processing a large batch in a few days require completely different structures. Bring a bulk job to a small operation and you get either subcontracted, inconsistent output or a slipped deadline. For portrait retouching in the hundreds to thousands of images, Tokyo Retouch — with about 50 staff retouchers and corporate high-volume rush support — is the fit.

Rush surcharges typically run 1.5–2× the standard rate. If the schedule allows, standard turnaround is cheaper. The cases worth paying express fees for are the ones where being late costs more than the fee: seasonal EC listings, event-deadline banners, and memorial portraits (iei), which in Japan are often ordered only after funeral dates are set. Vendors that handle memorial portraits are compared in the Japanese-language article "遺影写真のレタッチはどこに頼む？依頼先9社比較".

Which of the 15 to Choose, by Use Case

Fifteen options is too many to choose from directly. The table below reverse-maps from the job to the shortlist. Comparing on price alone is how people get burned; start from the use case closest to yours.

These are starting points; confirm final rates and availability with each service. The corporate-only services (Tokyo Retouch, Studio Koubou) do not accept individual orders.

FAQ

Conclusion: The Price Depends on What You Fix, How It's Counted, and How Much You Order

Retouching prices in Japan come down to work content × counting method (per spot or per person) × order volume. A single-spot fix can cost ¥100; a full portrait finish can top ¥10,000. Many services drop unit prices for batches, so the efficient move is to wait until your volume is clear, then get quotes.

Start with a test order of one or two images, check the finish and the response speed, and only then commit to a vendor.

For the corporate-foundation view of the same industry — founding years, capital, headcount, and client disclosure across nine companies — see "How Japanese Corporations Evaluate Photo Retouching Companies". For why foreign retouching vendors struggle to win Japanese corporate clients, see "Why Foreign Photo Retouching Companies Can't Win Corporate Clients in Japan".

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Tsubasa

Working in the EC department of a Japanese apparel company. My responsibilities range from coordinating product photography (sasage) to managing retouching vendors, updating product pages, and supervising part-time staff. I'm not great at Photoshop, so I outsource serious image work to professionals — but after working with many vendors, I've become pretty good at choosing the right one and checking deliverables. This blog is a record of things I've learned on the job.