Author: Rachelle Moore

Real estate photography these days undeniably brings great profit. This is the very reason why there are countless numbers of freelance photographers we see in our community, not to mention those who use the Internet to effectively promote themselves and their products.

One of the waterloos of a neophyte photographer is how to creatively edit real estate photos. Aside from the different tools and equipment needed in producing first-class photos, beginners still need lots of time and effort to come up with perfectly edited materials in making the business highly profitable.

It takes a lot of time, effort, and perseverance to become an excellent real estate photo editor. He has to equip himself enough knowledge of some great photo editing applications. He should also work with different photo editing services because these services have the capacity to provide him with different benefits and advantages that he can use.

Lack of time in editing real estate photos is perhaps the biggest problem that any photographer faces. Every potential buyer wanted high-quality photos of the property. For this reason, editing the photo is the main concern. Every photo should undergo editing process like color correction, adjusting shadows and perfecting the tones.

Having the best editing tools and equipment doesn’t guarantee that real estate photos will turn out perfect. If you lack proper lighting and your over-colored photos have undesirable clutter in the, they are the things that make them imperfect. Thus, editing is badly needed.

To attract buyers, make your photos free from any flaws especially in the eyes of your buyers. The necessity that is photo editing should always be at the helm of the business. This will finish all the aspects needed to be finished. With Photoshop and Lightroom on standby, you can actually enhance the color of your real estate photos. Likewise, you can remove unnecessary objects and improve lighting. Overall, you can basically change the settings to make near-perfect photos.

Enhancing the image doesn’t mean you will go overboard. Always put in mind how will people react once they see your photos. Are the photos you presented totally different from what they actually see? Make it sure that you are merely presenting your business. Avoid deceiving potential buyers as it is unhealthy for your real estate photography business.

What Should You Do?

In a nutshell, here are some basic tips for beginners on how to edit real estate photos.

1. Correct the Color

It is very hard to envision what a perfect picture is. In actuality, there is no such thing because everything really depends on how potential buyers approach your work. Getting into the details, correcting the color of the picture really does make sense. You must consider the weather condition because it affects the total perspectives of the photos. Also, you may consider the balance of your interior lighting as well as factors like window tint and camera settings. You can use the ambient shot straight out from the camera and pick the color button to give good overall exposure and luminosity. Also consider flash shot to change the composition but avoid having what is called color pollution by using camera flash with the lights on.

2. Enhance the Image

You can make your photos look better by enhancing the image. What does this mean? You can easily adjust the brightness, sharpness and contrast of your images along with what we call white balance. This will render the photos a better look. If you are doing composting and you want to have lots of frames, you may need to give star or a numbering system to for you to easily identify the images for composting.

3. Cropping Works

 Cropping is one basic requirement to improve many aspects of the picture. Cropping is simply the removal of what you think are the unnecessary items in the picture. One rule that must be religiously flowed though in cropping pictures: DO NOT crop out permanent structures in your photos. These permanent structures can be electrical posts, gravity tanks, and even establishments in the surrounding area. When there are unbalanced, unsymmetrical objects that are included in your photos, it would be easier to balance the size and shape by cropping out or cutting off parts of the object. Cropping helps in the distortion issue of the image.

4. Check Vertical Alignment

Another rule that must be followed is to make sure that images are totally aligned vertically. Vertical alignment can deal a big impact on your photo’s integrity. Having the vertical alignment of your photos checked is one expectation of your customers.

• If you are into layering jobs, you can auto align layers by clicking the top layer and hold down SHIFT and click on the bottom layer. It highlights all the layers included in your editing. It will auto align all the images.

You do not want any movement to screw up your work.

• To flatten out layers, you may choose the Spot Healing Brush.

5. Replacing the Sky

Weather conditions play a major role in real estate photos. Dull weather and dreary skies can affect the mood of your customers. Therefore it may also affect their decision. Instead of instantly having potential customers, you may consider sky replacement to change the look of the property once sky background looks gloomy. Customer’s mood is analogous to customer’s decision.

6. Object Removal

video tutorial credit to Webflippy

There are times when items that are needed are present in the photos you took. These items are not fixed or permanent structures. Sometimes the property is littered with different items like garbage bins, electrical wires, lawn mowers, and even trash. During your editing process, you must not think twice of removing them.

6. Add Something Desirable

If there are times when you needed to remove objects, there are also moments where you need to add some. Minor additions can is part of editing process that can influence buyer’s decisions. They may not want to look on an empty room. This will just increase on the impression that they are also looking on a blank space. The adage ‘beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’ may sound true. But in real estate, especially in houses and buildings, it is still more acceptable to have some items properly placed in the room.

Different Formats of Photos and Images

JPEG

JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group is a file format for a digital image and is perhaps the most common format used for adjusting the image quality and file size. Using a JPEG format you can actually control the compression of the file. The more compressed the image is, the lower quality image and lower file size are, and vice versa. This format is often used in photos like painting and realistic images that have a variety of tone and color. It is the format used by the majority of digital cameras.

This format works by removing tiny details and things that the human eye cannot see. This is known as “lossy” compression. JPEG has some different types like Progressive JPEG which is a type that shows a low quality image and improves it over a short amount of time. This is commonly used for the internet to help the users that have a slow connection.

PNG

PNG or Portable Network Graphics file is a type of format used for photos and pictures that need a transparent background or animations. The transparent part does not need to be the background because you can make transparent almost everywhere in the picture.

Using this format can be useful especially when creating logos, Designing a website or even creating other images. Like GIF and TIFF, PNG is a raster format, so it represents an image as a two-dimensional array of colored dots (pixels).

GIF

GIF or Graphics Interchange Format is a digital file format developed in 1987 by CompuServe. GIF works by reducing the size of the images and some short animations. And because no data and information is lost, this format became popular.

As the time this file format was created, it supports 256 colors and during this time, it was considered by many as a breakthrough. The method used to keep file at a minimum size is a compression algorithm commonly used or referred to as LZW name after the inventors who made GIF, Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv of Israel and Terry Welch of the United States.

GIF was so popular back then but now it is used repeatedly over the internet to post videos and memes on websites such as Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest and others.

BMP

BMP also known as bitmap image file and Device Independent Bitmap or simply Bitmap, is raster image format used to keep digital images. And the BMP file format is able to store two dimensional digital images, both monochrome and colored.

Since BMP format can support a wide range of colors and tones, it is used at photographs for shaded drawings and other detailed images. Detailed images usually are large but can be compressed so that the images can be detailed but not that hungry on storage. But if you want an image that is detailed, compression would be an option.

TIFF

TIFF or Tagged Image File Format is a computer file format that is a common format for exchanging raster graphic images between Programs. This format is mainly used by photographers and graphics artists because TIFF is supported by faxing, scanning and word processing.

An industry committee chaired by the Aldus developed the Tiff Format in 1986, which now is a part of the adobe software. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard contributed to the making of this file format. TIFF is used mainly Desktop Publishing and 3-D apps and medical imaging applications.

Raw Format

So the term Raw is unprocessed, right? Well this type of Format is just as it said as “unprocessed”. Nothing but the picture that was taken and stored – meaning no data was lost or gained because what you took or shoot in the camera was the RAW format. Nothing was eventually compressed or stretched, nothing is modified.

The Raw Format remains at it is uncompressed and contains almost all the information from the CCD or CMOS, Then it can be adjusted and edited to be converted into either TIFF or JPEG and other file formats.

The Raw format is mainly considered as a single image file format AKA .raw. In addition, there are types of raw files that depend on the device that the picture was taken from like Adobe (.DNG), Canon (.CRW, .CR2), Casio (.RAW), Fuji (.RAF), Hasselblad (.3FR) etc.

Featured photo via https://community.articulate.com/

Importance of Photo Editing: An Introduction

Photo editing can recreate ordinary pictures to look extra amazing. Enjoining your family on a trip to a splendid vacation, attending parties with your friends or possessing great memories of special occasions, taking pictures from these events can eventually make the event more extraordinary.

In these times of digitization and information age, almost everything we think of can be completed at the tip of the fingers. Picture editing is one of the most common tasks to be done when it comes to enhancement of pictures. Old images, photos and videos are the ones which are preferred to be edited. Image restoration of these types of pictures ultimately needs a particular set of skill.

With proper knowledge on photo editing, it can be guaranteed that profits can grow exponentially when used in a correct and professional manner. Photo editing is valuable to portraits for personal representation of pictures. It can be utilized for special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and other eventful ceremonies. It is also suitable for commercial projects and businesses, like real estate, in particular.

Photo editing can also help service and advertising firms for real estate companies and brokerage system. It can increase the aesthetic beauty of properties by the enhancement and enrichment of images. Images are edited by making the color more vibrant and to make the photos look more entertaining to stare at. These modified images may turn out to be used for listing services for other websites.

Some of the things that can be achieved when editing photos include the changing and enhancing the colors. Unwanted background can also be removed by means of cropping. Photo enhancing also includes adjustment of contrast, brightness and sharpness. What is more remarkable is by making a black and white photo turn to a colored photograph.

Essence of Knowing the Price of Photo Editing Services

Photo editing is a complex job. In the real estate business, photos play a major role in enticing potential buyers. Every buyer needs the right real estate photos to meet his or her actual property image. The demand of photo editing business is also on the rise. This shows that photo editing services has become one of the impressive and most sought after jobs in the market today. Without the correct photos of the property that every agent is offering, real estate business will not survive.

Real estate photo retouch pricing is necessary. It is very important for every agent, broker, and seller (and even buyer) to be wise about the price list of photo editing services. It is also very important for them to know what kind of retouching service is to be done and its corresponding price before placing an order to avoid creating future problems. It is a common practice that if the photo editing service provider is not happy with the price, he will not give his or her best photo retouching works. If you know the real rates of photo editing jobs, you can set your budget too.

Photo Retouching Rates

The list below shows the rate of every photo retouching service available today.

1. PHOTO EDITING SERVICE LIST: Basic Photo Retouching
DESCRIPTION: Color and toning changes, light portrait editing, image cropping
PRICE PER PHOTO: $2

2. PHOTO EDITING SERVICE LIST: Pro Photo Retouching
DESCRIPTION: Brightening of colors, fixing up and reshaping of figure, background improvement, HDR effects added
PRICE PER PHOTO: $5

3. PHOTO EDITING SERVICE LIST: High End Photo Retouching
DESCRIPTION: Color brightening, improvement of background, figure reshaping, adding of HDR effects supplement

4. PHOTO EDITING SERVICE LIST: Extra Photo Retouching
DESCRIPTION: Artistic image post processing, background manipulations, natural swapping of images (if needed), deep color supplement, shadow adjustment
PRICE PER PHOTO: $10

5. PHOTO EDITING SERVICE LIST: Photo Manipulation and Restoration
DESCRIPTION: Creative or funny photo edit, making digital drawings, natural image montage, comic picture creation
PRICE PER PHOTO: $25

Capturing a wonderful photograph requires excellent skills in photography. Enhancing it is another challenging story. The world of photography amazes each viewer of its distinct and indispensable beauty. On the other hand, distinguishing an original shot from an edited one is a tough thing to take into account. Nevertheless, an enhancing application or software gives handful of help in achieving quality pictures for any purpose it could serve.

Adobe Systems Inc. offers lots of software and applications that are convenient in everyday living. It could help in the attainment of desired goal especially in a particular workplace.

One of the popular software Adobe gives us service of is Photoshop. This software is used in photo editing. It permits users to adjust the details in a picture, some of which are photo resizing, cropping, recoloring, and other alternatives when it comes to digital editing. These become possible because of the different features that it has like brush manipulation, pen tool, luminance and color controls, group layering, variable fonts, quick share access and more.

Relative to this, marketing products in Real Estate Photography is becoming more popular with the help of Photoshop. One of the most relevant enhanced outputs is through High Dynamic Range (HDR) photographs. HDR means a picture that was improved in terms of contrast, brightness, and colors. It is achieved by combining various exposures.

Overdoing edits for an HDR image could create improper blend of colors but when it is done correctly, it produces dynamic range of details that is necessary in improving the whole aesthetic quality of the photograph.

HDR pictures give a great impact in Real Estate Photography. To attain an HDR photo might be difficult with bare point and shoot or Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras. But with the help of photo-enhancing software like Photoshop, this could be possible.

What positive and negative results could an HDR Real Estate Photography bring in the sake of the industry?

Positive

• The textures of the picture are enhanced through manual contrast.
• The quality of the photo will be good.
• The representation of the output will be more accurate.
• Different details could be added for a total makeover of the photo.
• Editing in software is user-friendly.
• HDR lets one bring down the brightness of the photo or blast the inside part to balance it with the brightness of the outside.
• It creates 3 or more exposures that can be merged into one image that gives a natural and more vivid look.

Negative

• There could be unnecessary objects or details especially if it’s an amateur or a beginner’s work.
• Colors and contrast could be over applied that cause uninteresting impact to the eyes.
• Noise could be in an extreme level which makes it unappealing.
• The real and accurate state of the colors could be spoiled.

Before directly editing a photo using a software like Photoshop, below are the things one should expect and should not expect.

What to expect in using Photoshop to achieve HDR photo

• Tone mapping is done after achieving a flat final product file.
• Property images of an HDR output require fine tuning and perfect adjustment.
• Timing and composition should be given an utmost focus.
• The final output relies not solely in the software but in the skills of the editor.

What not to expect in using Photoshop to achieve HDR photo

• Fast editing or fixing a photo to make it more interesting could not be achieved in a snap of a finger.
• An extraordinary result could not be attained through a single editing attempt.
• A noise-free photo with tone mapping could not be accomplished.
• Object removal, detail and structures’ alignment, as well as grouping could not perfectly work every time.

Sending raw and bracketed images from Lightroom to Photoshop is possible. This allows the user to merge the pictures in HDR through Photoshop. Adobe Lightroom is another software that works and blends well with Photoshop. This permits the user to view, import, export, manage, organize, tag, and share pictures. The steps below are some of the simple things a Photoshop user must take into account when Lightroom is also being utilized.

1. Point out the images to be edited. Bracket them as one. Afterwards, select the bracketed shots and go to Edit In then Merge to HDR Pro in the Photoshop software.
2. When the brackets open in Photoshop, select Remove Ghosts and change Mode to 32-Bit and uncheck Complete Toning in Adobe Camera Raw, and click OK.
3. Go back to Lightroom then view the HDR photo.
4. Finalize the product in Lightroom.

Even though the process of editing brackets in these softwares takes time, saving the highlights in an HDR photo using these steps is only one of the benefits an editor could gain. This output will definitely attract the attention of the viewer or customer.

More related tips here:

• http://54.201.150.30/basics-of-hdr-and-flash-for-real-estate/
• http://54.201.150.30/how-hdr-and-flash-work-together/

Adobe Photoshop is an excellent digital image editing software that lets you create a magnificent image into another level. Web designers, graphic artists, layout artists, photographers, real estate artists and other professionals in the field of arts and design prefer this user-friendly software in their crafts.

Learning to identify the problem in an image is a primary requirement in enhancing a photograph. Knowing what to edit, refine, recolor, add, or remove gives you the edge in achieving a better product compared to the image that was captured fresh from the camera. After identifying what’s faulty in an image, work on a copy of the image.

Start editing with adjustment layers and think the best to integrate on it. Changing or enhancing a photograph’s background is just another technique you can explore in Photoshop to improve its quality.

Here are the steps you must follow in modifying or enhancing the background of an image using the software.

1. Add a Blank Layer

After opening the image in Photoshop, there is a single layer which is the Background. Add another blank layer above it by simply clicking on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layer options.

2. Set Background and Foreground Colors

Your foreground color must be set to black and your background must be set to white. In order to do this, press the letter D on your keyboard. You can see that it has been changed accordingly if you look at the bottom of the Tool options. The square strip in the top left shows the present Foreground color while the square strip in the bottom right shows the present Background color.

3. Grab the Gradient Tool

Select the Gradient tool in the Tool options or quickly grab it by pressing the letter G on the keyboard.

4. Assign the Foreground to Transparent Gradient

Right-click for (Windows) and Control-click for (Mac) anywhere inside the document window and select the Foreground to Transparent gradient from the Gradient selector that will appear. This is in the top row of gradients, second from the left. Click it to apply.

5. Stretch a Gradient Inside the Image

Create a neutral density filter by stretching a black-to-transparent gradient in the image. In doing this, Layer 1 must be selected then click somewhere in the background of the image and drag straight down the area where you intend to. While doing this, press the Shift key to assure that it goes straight to where you point it to. Move the gradient across the area of your choice.

6. Modify the Blend Mode of Layer 1 to Overlay

Proceed to the Blend Mode option in the top left corner of the Layer options. Layer 1 must be selected and click the Overlay option. This enhances the contrast by blending the black area into the image. You can see that your photograph background improves. But be careful not to include the foreground or subject in this process. You can use a layer mask.

7. Add a Layer Mask to Layer 1

Be sure you select Layer 1 before clicking the Layer Mask option at the bottom of the Layer options. It will be added to the gradient layer in the document.

8. Pick the Brush Tool

Paint black on the Layer Mask over the zone you want to protect to hide the effects of the gradient of the photo. Press B on your keyboard to grab the Brush Tool quickly.

9. Set Foreground Color to Black

Swap the background and foreground by pressing the letter X on the keyboard. You will notice the square strips of background and foreground colors switched.

10. Paint over the Zones to Protect from the Gradients

After switching the background and foreground colors, paint over the zones you want to protect using the Brush tool. If you want to change the size of your brush and make it smaller, press the left bracket key on the keyboard. On the other hand, press the right bracket key if you want to make it larger. The edges of the brush could either soft or hard. To make it soft, press down the Shift and left bracket key. Hold down Shift and right bracket key to make the edge harder. If you accidentally painted a portion of the photo which is unnecessary, simply press X on the keyboard to change the strips from background to foreground and vice versa.

11. Adjust Brightness and Contrast

After painting over the zones and enhancing the background, you might want to improve the brightness and contrast of the final product. You can do this by proceeding to the menu bar. Select Image then Adjustments and select Brightness/Contrast. Select the layer where you will adjust. Alter the buttons to the point that you desire. After the tunings, click OK.