correctmyphotos

Why are real estate photos on the Internet so dull and lifeless? Because realtors skip an important step–fixing the photo.
I had wondered why the online real estate photos were so bad so I asked my friend Barb, a realtor in the Twin Cities area, to lead me through the process she follows after she lands a new listing.  With signed contract in hand she takes her trusty digital camera and takes the photos she will use to list the property on the online MLS service and for “sell sheets”. Once back at her office she downloads the files to her computer, selects the ones she wants to display and uploads them (full resolution) to the Northstar MLS service.

So, what step did she miss? You guessed it! She didn’t fix them. If you have followed my blog you will know my mantra, “Every photo needs to be cropped and color corrected.”  So, why didn’t Barb take that extra step? Would it take too much time? Did she know how?” Nobody does it.  Didn’t she care?

Knowing Barb there was little doubt that she cares. She is a professional and really does want to show off her properties in the best way possible. I saw that from the sell sheets she had printed by a professional printer (who fixed the photos before printing). But, she just didn’t know how to do it and didn’t want to take the time to learn and use a complicated photo editing software program.

This photo was cropped, color corrected, and resized before uploading

Crop, Correct Color, and Resize Before Uploading to MLS
Barb was concerned that the front veiw of a recent listing was dull and fuzzy so I took the original file image and opened it in CorrectPhoto, cropped it to get rid of the front of the car and driveway and color corrected it with OneClick.  And, the picture was sharp but so was the original photo. So why was it fuzzy on the MLS site? I suspected the answer-the scaling algorithm on the MLS site wasn’t very good and it turned out I was right. So, before uploading I resized the corrected photo to 640×480 and you can see the result. Unfortunately, I don’t have the orginal to show a comparison, but trust me this one is a lot better. I took another one of the photos from the listing and simply color corrected it and here is the comparison.

Real Estate Photos Need to be Color Corrected

In summary, every real estate photo needs the following before uploading to the MLS Service:  1. Cropped, 2. Color Corrected, 3. Resized. 

If you know how to use Photoshop Elements you may certainly use it, however, I would suggest getting  PictoColor’s iCorrect OneClick Plug-in for the color correction. My preference (of course) is CorrectPhoto because it is the easiest for most of us to use and has OneClick Color built in. It took me about 45 seconds to crop, color correct, and resize the house picture.

If you are a realtor I would recommend you take the time to fix the photo before you upload.  In today’s market you need to show off your listings to attract potential buyers. If you are not a realtor tell them how to make their listings better. They will thank you for the tip.

You can bet that Barb’s listings from now on are going to have the best photos of all her collegues. That is until they decide to take a few minutes to fix their photos.

Wayne http://correctphoto.com/CorrectPhoto_Realtor.htm

What will our Gourmet Group do with the photos?
Last weekend our gourmet group (a group of 4 couples– the guys are the chefs) went to one of the couple’s cabin in Spearfish Canyon, South Dakota. The theme of the meal we prepared on Saturday was Greek and it was, if I may so, outstanding and we had a great time. The floor of the canyon is 5000 feet above sea level so there was still a fair amount of snow around and the famous waterfall, Bridal Veil Falls, was frozen solid.  As usual, I am the one in the group that takes the most photos and I give a CD of edited photos to the other couples. Normally, I select the photos worth editing, crop to a 4×6 print format, color correct, and save the fixed photo. But then I remembered that Ron and Karlyn just bought a new super HDTV set and might enjoy viewing the photos in HDTV format. But, Dick and Hope will most likely want to get 4×6 prints made at Sam’s Club and I suspected Bill would just look at them his laptop and maybe send a few to their kids in Dallas. Or, he might pick one of the photos to create a “post card print” to put in the new 5×7 frame he and Mary Kay received as a hostess gift. So, what did I do

 Crop To Digital Camera 3×4 Format and Color Correct.
If you have previously visited my blog you know that I believe every photo needs to be cropped and color corrected. I decided to go through the photos, discard the bad ones, color correct  the remaining photos, and leave them in the 3×4 format, the aspect ratio of the digital camera.  If there was an obvious crop that should be done, such as removing someone’s elbow from the photo, I cropped it, however I used the 3×4 cropping format that is in the new version of  CorrectPhoto. Now when I give the photos to others they can crop to whatever format they desire. And, since they all have CorrectPhoto and know how to use it they can crop to whatever format they want. BTW, none of these guys would have the interest or patience to learn a complicated editing program.  Here is a set of photos showing several different cropping formats. 

Bridal Veil Falls, Before and After Color Correction, No Crop Crop to Digital Camera 3x4 Format Crop to 3x4 digital camera format

 Crop to 4×6 Format 

Crop to 4x6 print format Crop to 16x9 HDTV FormatCrop to HDTV 16x9 Format

Crop to 5×7 Portrait Format  Make a Post Card
And, if you want to finish the post card with some text it would look like this.

Bridal Veil Falls, 5x7 with text

 If you do not know how you or your friends will show the photos you take I suggest you Crop to the standard digital camera 3×4 format (or 4×3 if you have a vertical shot) and color correct. then you can crop to the desired format and create a set of photos for the specific use.

Wayne www.correctphoto.com

I used CorrectPhoto to crop and color correct the photo to create the portrait photo of Kathryn.  If you have and are familiar with Photoshop Elements you can certainly use it to crop the photo.  I discussed the basics of photo cropping in an earlier post, “Cropping Photos. How?”. 

Yes, all digital photos can benefit from a little cropping and color correction. There are some photos have an imbedded memory that can be released with the Cropping Tool of a photo editing program. Take a new look at some of your discarded photos and see if you can find a memory.

Wayne http://correctphoto.com

Every Photo Needs To Be Cropped. How to Crop.

As I discussed in my last post, every digital photo needs to be cropped (“Why Crop?”). To crop a photo you need a photo editing program and there are many to choose from. Most likely, there was an editing program included in with your digital camera and most online print services offer some level of editing features. A simple fact is that most photo editing programs are too complicated and difficult to learn for most digital photographers whose primary interest is taking pictures and showing them to friends and family. You have to determine your level of interest and amount of time you have to devote to learning a photo editor and to edit photos.

From my perspective if you are willing to learn to use a comprehensive photo editing program I would recommend Photoshop Elements by Adobe. If you are not, I recommend CorrectPhoto by PictoColor (Admittedly, I am a bit prejudice regarding CorrectPhoto, but the choice is yours.) If you don’t want to spend money on a photo editing program you might want to consider using the Windows Photo Gallery editor included in Windows Vista or a free online service. I do believe, however, that photo editing is best done on your computer before images are uploaded to an online print or sharing service. I would also avoid using Photo Kiosks at retail stores to edit photos, but I will talk about that in a future post.

As I previously discussed (Photo Applications) before you crop you must decide what you are going to do with the photo. For this discussion I will assume you want to make a 4×6 print. (continue reading…)

Every Digital Photo Needs to Be Cropped! Why?

Because we can!
The first reason is “because we can” and that is one of the real benefits and joys of digital photography. With a little cropping we can turn an average picture into a memorable photo. With film photography we basically had to accept what we got when we picked up our prints. How many times have you wished you could retake the shot and not include someones elbow or half a face? With a digital image we can easily trim or eliminate portions of the picture we don’t want or need.

Cropping Out the Fence Makes This a Better Picture

Aspect Ratios Vary
The aspect ratio (the ratio of the width to the height of the picture) of a digital camera sensor is typically 4×3 (1.33). The aspect ratio of a 4×6 (6×4) print is 1.5. The format for HDTV is 16×9 or 1.78. so, if you want 4×6 prints you should decide what portions of the image should be cut off and not let the printer software decide for you. Here is an example of what can happen if you let the printer decide where to crop the photo–And, it is my head that go clipped!

Crop photos before you send them to the printer

(continue reading…)