Rule 13 Of Good Real Estate Photos - Have A Go At Editing Them
August 27th, 2007 Rules of Good Photos
I mean really, just go buy a editing package and have a go.
Yes indeed Photoshop is like the Vikings pillaging your wallet. Larry Lohrman reported today that Adobe is offering Photoshop upgrades for the princely sum of $299.
Ouch.
I’ve been low budget hacking with my Paint Shop Pro XI for like $60 from Target on sale and getting decent results. I’m willing to believe that it’s not as good as Photoshop, which is pretty industry standard, but PSP XI just has Photoshop beat soundly on the price front.
I spotted this on the MLS today;
Before editing After
To start with, the photo has a couple of really good things going for it. It’s basically well composed and taken with a moderately wide angled lens. Also it is bright rather than dark. It’s far from being a “Bad MLS Photo of the Day”.
The downsides are the camera rotation, meaning the right side is lower than the left. This is an easy fix in PaintShop. Once the rotation is fixed, you really start to notice the distortion from the wide-angle lens in the fridge area. It’s a couple more clicks in Paint Shop and it’s gone.
The other issue is the color. I actually slightly darkened the image and dialed the depth of color up a little. It makes it look a little richer without coming off as fake.
I did have to crop the image slightly as the rotation and distortion corrections left odd whitespace on the edges. Plus there is some degradation in the MLS image (always use original images for advertising purposes).
Editing can make very average shots, turn into good ones.
You can do this. Really.
Just have a go.
The Recap…
Rule 13 – Have A Go At Editing Your Photos
Rule 12 – Stop Shooting The Hallways
August 27th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Even a quick cycle through Yahoo’s FREE Picasa software (PC only) can do some wonders. The Fill Light setting alone is worth the price(!) to provide the additional foreground light that most digital cameras are lacking in automatic mode.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I meant Google’s Picasa….I was thinking of Yahoo’s Flickr photo share service…..sorry.
Also, Picasa is only for PCs. Mac lovers like me have to keep a PC (or virtual machine) on hand for Picasa for now.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I played with Picasa a while back but never got into it. Paint Shop came with my current laptop and I just stuck with it, upgraded to XI recently.
The point remains though.
Have a go!
August 28th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Athol,
Besides Realtors, I really wish stagers would get this too. It really is easy and takes little time.
I actually posted “Step by Stem instruction” on how to do this last year in a post entitled “Someone Needs to Tell the Truth… PHOTOS LIE” Here is the link http://activerain.com/blogsview/Someone-needs-to-tell-the-truth-PHOTOS-LIE-?12149,
This story never can be told enough.
(Me)Craig Schiller
August 28th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Athol,
Besides Realtors, I really wish stagers would get this too. It really is easy and takes little time.
I actually posted “Step by Stem instruction” on how to do this last year in a post entitled “Someone Needs to Tell the Truth… PHOTOS LIE” Here is the link http://activerain.com/blogsview/Someone-needs-to-tell-the-truth-PHOTOS-LIE-?12149,
This story never can be told enough.
(Me)Craig Schiller
August 28th, 2007 at 6:02 am
I agree Craig. In fact stagers that don’t bother to go the final effort to get good photos are likely not so hot at staging too.
I mean staging is all about how things look…
October 15th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
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