Do you struggle with taking gorgeous photos of your property listings? Think your pictures could actually be hurting your sales more than they’re helping?
Don’t worry, you’re not alone!
Real estate photography can be tricky gig, especially if you’re someone who’s just getting started with home selling. From websites to online listings and social media, there’s no avoiding the digital marketplace. This shift has made the use of compelling visual content like photos and videos absolutely essential to marketing yourself and your listings. With a camera and some photo editing software, you’ll be well on your way in no time!
To help get you started, we’ll take you through a few of our favorite tips that help you get amazing photos – whether it’s for an online listing, a selfie for social, or as part of a pamphlet or brochure for your next open house.
Ready to discover the secrets to amazing real estate photography? Then let’s go!
1) Watch Out for Image Distortion
Because a wide-angle lens takes in more details than the size of the camera sensor, the image can become distorted. This means straight lines start to curve slightly giving a building exterior or interior a distorted look. Take a good look at your images buildings that seem bow outwards or lean forward are distorted. You’ll typically notice this in lenses that range from 18 – 45mm. Fix this problem easily using the lens correction settings in your photo editor. A few simple clicks can adjust your image, so it looks more realistic and attractive.
2) Focus on Important Details
Perhaps you want to focus on promoting a group of century homes, and they all possess beautiful fireplaces. Use the crop tool to take out unimportant details and focus on the beauty of the stone fireplace. Adjust your crop tool so that only the desired items are portrayed in the image.
3) Make Sure Your Shot’s Straight
Maybe you are in the process of creating a flyer for your next open house, and you decide to include an image of a grand sweeping staircase. The only problem is you didn’t take the time to ensure the image you shot was straight, and your staircase seems to lean to the right. You don’t want to put off potential buyers by showing them crooked images. Instead use the straighten tool to help you level out the staircase so you can show its true beauty.
4) Retouch Those Promotional Selfies
To promote your latest listing you’ve taken a selfie in front of the property, and you plan on posting the image on Instagram. Before you put your face out there for the public to see; make a few simple retouches using a blemish remover, tooth whitener and skin smoother to fix up your image for a professional look.
5) Get Rid of the Vignette
Vignetting is a darkening of the edges of your frame. Another way to describe this occurrence is the light falls off at the edges of your frame creating a darker area around the outer edges. At times a vignette can be attractive and help to draw attention to the center of the frame. Other times this effect can be displeasing. Easily adjust the vignette in your images until you are happy with the desired effect.
6) Keep an Eye on Your Light Sources
If you’ve ever taken an image on a bright sunny day, you might have noticed that you’ve lost a lot of detail due to the image being overly bright. You can fix this too. Adjust the exposure as well as the levels and curves to help you recover highlights. It’s easy to do just start by playing around with the exposure until you’ve created an image that appears more to your liking.
Curves refer to the amount of highlights and shadows within your image. The curve refers to the shape of the line used to adjust these elements. By moving the line creating an S-shaped arc, you can adjust the light within an image so that you can recover detail in the brightest areas.
Of course, if the image is clipped you may not be able to recover all the lost detail, but an image that’s just a little too bright can be adjusted to create a pleasing picture for your next flyer.
7) Save Time with One-Click Fixes
Your head might be spinning right now with all of this talk of curves and levels. That’s okay because you can use the different auto-adjust features within a program to help make quick and easy fixes to an image. A few simple clicks can greatly improve the look of an image before you post it to Facebook.
8) Use Your Photos for More with Text, Annotation & Drawing Tools
Don’t just post images to promote your properties. Use photo editing software to add text, shapes and graphics to your images. Create flyers and sell sheets by layering multiple images and text together. Save yourself some money by learning to use layers. Graphic designers are masters at layering images together, but you can learn to produce your promotional materials. Once the concept of using layers is understood it’s easy to design eye-catching material for real estate promotion.
Think about creating a graphic that you can add to an image to advertise a new listing or a listing that’s just sold. It’s easy to add type and other elements to any image using layers. Layers are essential for advanced image editing, compositing and graphic design.
9) Got it Wrong In-Camera? Fix it Later with PaintShop Pro!
Here at Corel, we’ve designed a program that can provide you with easy to use tools for completing these types of edits. PaintShop Pro is comprehensive photo editing software that’s comparable to Photoshop but without the burden of a monthly subscription or the confusion of having so many tools you’ll likely never need.
Complete with video tutorials, a guided tour and other learning resources, PaintShop Pro is your easy-to-learn, affordable photo editor for every budding real estate agent.
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