correctmyphotos

Is the Color the Best it can be?
The other day while picking up some printing a neighbor, Rich, was picking up a nice glossy photo poster of a house he is selling. Rich is a realtor and a very good one. He showed be the poster and while I was impressed with the layout and the composition of the photos I was struck with how “dull” they looked. Of course, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and said, ‘Nice layout, but the colors are wrong.” Rich actually agreed with me (or humored me) but said he really didn’t have time (or knowledge) to do anything about it. He is like the majority of real estate professionals that use their own “point and shoot” digital camera to photos to post on the web and for promotional material. They don’t or can’t afford to use a professional photographer and, as a result, most of the  real estate photos you see on the web are not very good.  That is really too bad since the first impression most people searching for a house is made from the photos posted on the web.

You don’t have to be a pro to take good real estate photos.

Better Color Makes the House More Interesting

 Here is an typical example of a home listing in the Minneapolis area. Using CorrectPhoto with OneClick color I made the color better in less than two seconds. The composition of the photo is pretty good so I did not crop the photo. Interior shots are generally the worst both from a composition and color standpoint.  The house lights and camera flash make for a bad combination for good color.  By getting rid of the color cast and boosting the brightness and saturation a little make the kitchen much more appealing. (continue reading…)

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