How to Perform DIY Photo Editing in Real Estate Images

How to Perform DIY Photo Editing in Real Estate Images

Are you just starting out your photography career? Are you looking to save some cash by doing the editing yourself or are you simply aspiring to make a name for yourself in editing stunning photos from home? If any of these questions sound familiar, then you are in the right article.

Real estate photos are significant in reeling potential buyers through different communication media and every image you take needs to undergo enhancement to bring out the best qualities of the property. The word editing seems intimidating because it may imply hard work and sometimes even an expensive cash outflow to have someone do it for you. What you need to know is that do-it-yourself photo editing is simple, easy, and accessible.

Real estate DIY photo editing is a process that begins with planning. It starts off with the equipment that should be available, arranging the look of the property’s interior and exterior, controlling amount of light available, and visualizing how you want the final image to look.

The Right Equipment

Purchasing and bringing the right equipment to the photo shoot already puts a step correctly into DIY photo editing, and the following are the essentials recommended:

  • Using wide angle lenses captures more areas of the room creating a single photo that captures all the beautiful points. It also creates an illusion of space that is larger than what the specifications might say.
  • A wide aperture lens is useful for long exposure shots where the sun shines through the windows and into the interior. This should go hand-in-hand with an upgraded flash to help achieve the desired level of light. This gives a range of possibilities as you move to DIY photo editing later on.
  • A tripod and remote trigger are optional accessories, but we highly recommend them to make it easier to adjust the height of the camera and ensure the stability of the photos. Crouching and stepping on ladders to achieve the height requirement may seem a good idea until something happens.

The Property

Do-it-yourself photo editing also means doing the due diligence of planning the shoot. A day or two before the shoot, it is recommended to visit the location to see the house for yourself and discover which parts of the house needs more sprucing up more than others.

  • Walk through the property, both inside the house and the outside to see all available rooms.
  • Identify and list the best angles and areas to showcase.
  • Identify items considered as clutter that should be removed or identify areas that need more decorative ornaments, this is called staging.
  • Check for light conditions from available windows and bulbs, making sure that all electrical lights are functioning.

Available DIY Editing Tools

After going through the property and taking the photos you need, it is time to sit down and make those photos look gorgeous. Real estate DIY photo editing entails knowing what to adjust on the photo and what tool to use. This first list describes the tools available at your disposal for photo editing and range from the simplest to the most comprehensive ones out there.

  • Photoshop and Lightroom are from Adobe. They require a subscription fee which is not all that expensive and gives you a decent range of tools to work with when editing. These are the most popular software used by photographers because of their reputation that can make your DIY photo editing look like it was made by a pro.
  • GIMP on the other hand is free and works across several types of operating system giving more flexibility depending on your device. While it is not as comprehensive as the offerings from Adobe, it is fairly decent for producing enhanced images
  • Canva is the simplest tool free for use even on mobile phones. This software can be used for editing smaller pieces of work like logos and watermarks. For real estate DIY photo editing, you might want to consider something more sophisticated than this.

Basic DIY Editing Essentials

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Thinking of how you want the photo to appear culminates in this stage. All the work done to capture what you want to showcase from the property becomes the raw material to enhancing a picture that stands out. DIY photo editing techniques that you should look out for are the basic elements to photo editing. These are the foundational checks that when followed, can transform the image ready for advertising:

  • Color and line adjustment – the goal is to enhance the photo and make it look real even after editing. Some tips to watch out for are using neutral colors rather than striking ones that may contrast with natural colors. Watch out for distorted lines on doors and walls, and make them straight using the free transform tool.
  • Using layers – the reason why a single image has multiple shots is to bring together the best qualities of each shot into one image during editing. This is most useful especially in do-it-yourself photo editing because it makes it easier to grab good qualities from other shots of the same image rather than spend hours editing a single space to make it look as good as the other areas of the image.
  • The Curve tool – the mood of the picture severely impacts first impressions especially for buyers browsing web pages. This tool allows you to control the brightness of the picture to make certain colors pop out and illuminate the room if it wasn’t previously.
  • Light correction – you may find shadows that come from different directions and this is totally normal especially with multiple sources of light. Remove unnecessary shadows and make them all consistent in one natural direction.

Conclusion

Do-it-yourself photo editing doesn’t require a lot of money. It requires the proper procedure and detail to execute the perfect picture. Thinking in the context of real estate DIY photo editing, setting yourself up for editing is just as important as editing the photos itself, and perhaps achieving the same quality with getting it done with a professional realty editor. Being able to start with do-it-yourself photo editing also builds a strong foundation of skills that can later on propel your photography career up, seeing that you have transformed into the total package and one-stop shop for people in the real estate business.

 

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