Are you looking into the most common and basic techniques on how to edit real estate photos? Post-processing for real estate photography is an essential step in creating amazing images that will help your clients sell their listings fast and for top dollar.
There are different techniques that real estate photographers can use in order to retouch and make property images look stunning.
In this post, we’ll share our Top 10 Techniques on How to Edit Real Estate Photos and make your images look amazing. But first, let’s take a look at why photo editing is crucial in real estate.
Why Is Photo Editing Crucial in Real Estate?
In the real estate industry, high-quality images that appeal to potential buyers are an absolute must. As mentioned earlier, your photography is what is going to help your agent and Realtor clients to get homebuyers and hopefully sell the property.
So, it’s your job to provide them with beautiful photos of homes, yards, offices, and interior spaces that will captivate the viewers, which requires good post-processing.
With that being said, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details next!
How to Edit Real Estate Photos (Top 20 Techniques)
Here are some of the basic and most commonly used editing techniques on how to edit real estate photos in Lightroom and Photoshop.
1. Brightness and Color Correction
To get started, brightness and color correction are the backbones of all image enhancement.
Making adjustments to color, contrast, tone, and sharpness may seem obvious and simple. But with a few clicks of a mouse, it can turn an image from looking bland and boring into a bright and appealing image.
2. Perspective and Horizon Correction
Straight vertical and horizontal lines that don’t converge are known issues in real estate photography. Factors such as the curvature of the lens, the shape of the room and its items, and even the positioning of the camera can make these lines come out distorted.
Fortunately, you can fix this issue in post-processing with a simple retouch called perspective correction. This editing technique corrects the distortion and misalignment between the horizontal lines and perspective. That is to say, it aligns the lines with the image’s frame to make the photo more natural.
3. Remove Unwanted Objects
More often than not, real estate photography includes unwanted objects that you need to remove to clean up the image.
But don’t worry because these can be edited in Photoshop by using the Clone Stamp Tool. Simply, choose the Clone Stamp Tool and pick the source area by pressing the Alt key. Then, you can start cloning the object that you wish to remove.
4. Remove Color Cast
Color cast in a photo can be considered an eyesore, especially in the real estate photography industry, where images need to look extra captivating. To put it another way, color cast is a tint of a specific color in a photograph that is often unwanted and distracting.
Fortunately, through editing, you can restore the original color of the areas with color cast using 2 simple techniques. These techniques neutralize and remove the unwanted tint that masks the actual colors.
5. Enhance the Photo With a Sky Replacement
Undeniably, colors come alive on bright, sunny days. On the other hand, gloomy and overcast skies can make your real estate photography look dull. Luckily, you can replace the sky with a few not-too-difficult editing tricks and make your dull sky look picture-perfect.
All in all, a sky replacement in real estate photographs can:
- Make the property look more appealing
- Offer a mood booster
- Provide real estate photographers more freedom when not having to worry about the weather or the time of day to do the photoshoot
6. Photo Manipulation
Undoubtedly, nothing is more welcoming and inviting than a full, green lawn outside of a home. But sometimes, you need to take photos in the wrong season when the lawn has dead spots. Or when there hasn’t been a lot of rain and the grass is brown.
In addition, other things you can do to manipulate and enhance your photos are:
- Adding an inviting fire to the fireplace
- A pool and patio area outside of the property
- Fresh modern furniture on the balcony
All things considered, these more advanced editing techniques can all quickly be done by TT Photo’s professional real estate photo editors.
7. Reduce Noise
Noise or grain appears as millions of hazy dots and decreases the image’s clarity and quality. Seeing that, makes otherwise beautiful photos look grainy and unappealing.
However, it is rather easy to fix! In Photoshop you can just click on the Filter menu, and choose Noise > Reduce Noise.
Additionally, TT Photo’s professional photo editors can tone down noise through a variety of editing techniques. And as a result, your photo will become clearer, richer, and more attractive.
8. HDR Editing
High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) is a technique that many real estate photographers use to create a greater dynamic range of luminosity. This technique is used to blend multiple images, taken at different exposures, and later combine them in post-processing to create one perfectly blended image.
To create HDR images, you should shoot your subject in at least three bracketed images using different exposures. Then, all you have to do is merge the photos into one to show its highlights and shadows.
For more details, see our post on: REAL ESTATE HDR PHOTO EDITING SERVICES IN TT PHOTO
9. Remove Ghosting
Light flares and ghosting in real estate photography are fairly common phenomena. Ghosting can happen when shooting bracketed images for HDR photography.
While it can enhance the mood of a photo, in real estate marketing, ghosting comes across as a bit manipulative and cheesy. The reason for this is that it takes away the professional look of a picture.
10. Adjust Shadows
When shooting real estate interiors and exteriors, you may encounter problems with shadows and uneven lighting. While shadows can add contrast and dimension to an image, they can also be distracting and make your real estate photography look less professional.
To combat this, you can use Lightroom to adjust shadows, highlights, whites, and blacks. Simply, drag the Shadows Bar to the right in order to open up the shadows a little bit.
Final Thoughts
To recap, these are some of the more basic real estate photo editing techniques that will help take your image enhancements a long way. But if this seems too much for you to learn, and you want to spend your time out on the field taking amazing property photos instead, you can always outsource your photo editing.
TT Photo has a team of highly talented real estate photo editors who are ready and eagerly waiting to enhance your photos.
Better yet, you’ll also get access to our user-friendly photo management system, so you can upload and receive photos, and send instructions and feedback. As well as track and manage team members and clients, store final images, and more!
We hope this post helped you learn how to edit real estate photos using our top 10 techniques.
