Real estate photo editing is a time-consuming process. You may need to spend several hours to present the property or interior in the best way possible, as this is important for successful sales. Photographers and sometimes real estate agents can apply various real estate photography editing techniques to make the real estate look more attractive for clients.
Below there is the list of 7 MUST-HAVE photo editing techniques for professional and magazine-look real estate photos.
1. Correct Colors and White Balance
The first step you should start with when improving real estate photos is color correction. It can be performed using Lightroom or Photoshop (Camera RAW). Still, Lightroom is a bit faster and simpler for inexperienced retouchers.
The Eyedropper tool for color correction helps when you need to improve the white balance. Evaluate the photo, as you may need to adjust hue, tint and saturation settings. All this will make the photo look more lifelike and bright.
2. Make Line Straightening
Lines in property photography require special attention. It’s always important to check whether all of them are straight. Before pressing the release button, have a look at the lines of your interior or exterior and choose a perfect angle to show them correctly.
If you didn’t manage to keep the lines straight, you can take advantage of some real estate photo editing techniques. For instance, use the Free Transform tool in Photoshop. Select a whole picture and drag its edges opposite to where the lines are distorted.
3. Balance Light
Real estate photographers always need to correct shadows and lighting when they edit interior and exterior shots. Lightroom has all the necessary tools to improve shadows, whites, blacks, and highlights.
To slightly open up shadows, it is necessary to drag the Shadows bar to the right. Be careful and don’t overdo it. To make highlights smoother, move the highlights bar leftwards to bring down the hot spots.
To regulate whites and blacks, hold down the Alt key (for Windows) or Option key (for Mac). Drag the whites and blacks bar to the right until the specs of white and blacks will appear in a shot.
4. Experiment with HDR Photo Editing
One of the most popular real estate photography editing techniques is HDR (High dynamic range) which provides a better dynamic range of luminosity. To get HDR photos, you need to photograph property in various bracketed images. Next, combine shots to get one image to demonstrate its shadows and highlights. You can always apply a HDR Lightroom presets to simulate this effect while color correction.
5. Address Professional Real Estate Photo Editing Services
With a busy photo shooting schedule, you may lack time to enhance real estate images in Photoshop or Lightroom. To get amazing results, you can entrust this work to professional real estate photo editing services . These companies offer a range of real estate services, including color correction, white balance adjusting, background improvement, objects removal, etc.
Real estate photo editing pricing depends on the amount of photos and services required. Thus, basic photo editing costs about $2 while for magazine image editing may be up to $10.
6. Edit Photos with Curves
Another hefty tool for real estate photo editing in Photoshop is The Curves. It works if you need to improve and optimize colors. Still, this instrument requires special skills to reach the best outcomes.
The Curves Tool is located in the Image Menu, the Adjustments section. Choose Auto in a dialogue box and move the diagonal line to the center. Drag the line upwards to brighten a photo, or downwards to achieve an opposite look.
Click OK to save the changes. Play a bit with the Curves Tool to see how it can affect the property shots.
7. Try Hue and Saturation Adjustment
As well as The Curves, Hue and Saturation are also widely used to improve interior photos. These sliders can be used not only to correct colors but also to boost the greens in landscape and exterior shots.
Hue and Saturation are located in the Image Menu, in the Adjustments section. Select Yellow in the dialog box, raise the Hue value and reduce Lightness and Saturation.
Then turn Yellow to Green and repeat the changes you’ve made to Hue, Saturation and Lightness. Click OK.
