“Having great images is essential when making an impression on home hunters.”– Rightmove |
Where attracting buyers is concerned, your estate agent photos are one of the most important parts of your property marketing; second only perhaps to the listing price.
It is easier (and generally quicker and cheaper) to edit photos that were taken properly in the first place. This means it’s always advised that you hire a professional property photographer or ensure that the photos you’re taking are of the highest possible standard. You can learn more about how to take great photos yourself, here.
We’ll share how to carry out editing images at the end of this post but first let’s delve into why and what edits we need.
Why Editing Property Photos Is An Absolute Must For Successful Estate Agents
Professional photo enhancing and editing improves the appearance of your property marketing. This is does two things:
- Increases your attractiveness to potential vendors, improving your ability to win new instructions.
- Increases your attractiveness to potential buyers, improving the performance of your property portal listings and enabling you to attract more interest.
Professional property photo editing can increase your performance on Rightmove by up to 30%. This is because more attractive, eye catching images draw more attention and interest from potential buyers.
The Basic Edit : A Must Have For All Property Photography
If your property photos haven’t been taken by a professional, they may in fact need more extensive editing but, otherwise, a basic edit should be carried out on ALL photos.
The basic edit is essentially an enhancement and correction process. In the basic edit, photo retouching techniques are used to correct mistakes with lighting or alignment as well as enhance colours so that viewers of the image are naturally more attracted to it.
What Is The Basic Edit?
| Brightness & Contrast | The process of adjusting the colours in a photo to make them as accurate and as eye catching as possible. |
| Blue Sky Replacement | This is an enhancement technique for exterior and window view shots to give photos the best possible finish with a blue, clear and appealing sky view. |
| Vertical Correction | The process of correcting vertical and horizontal distortions (wonky photos). |
| Shadow Correction | The process of lightening up any shadows. |
| White Balancing | The process of making images that appear white in person appear the same in the photo. |
By using an image like that on the left, where the colour has not been corrected, the property is not being presented in the best possible light. What could be a highly sought after property may fail to get interest simply because the images used didn’t attract the clicks that lead to viewings.
This room is presented much more attractively in the edited version on the right.
The More Complex Property Photography Edits
Item removal example by PropertyBox
Estate agents who really want to impress their (potential) vendors and buyers might consider more complicated edits such as item removal and staging simply to stand out more and to set themselves apart from the pack.
However, where the photographs were not taken by professional photographers or at least very high standard, certain more complicated or extensive edits may be a necessity in order to enhance your property listing.
Examples of when this could be the case are when:
- Curtains and blinds were not opened so images completely lack natural light and appear very dark.
- The interior of the property was not cleared or clutter or other mess.
- The exterior was not cleared of clutter, cars or other items.
- Unsightly items were left in place.
Consider using the simple property preparation tips here to avoid the need for complicated property photo editing.
What Are The More Complicated Property Photo Edits?
The Basic Edit : A Must Have For All Property Photography
1. Item Removal
This is probably the most desirable complex edit for estate agents. Where it has not been possible to prepare a property due to current tenants or miscommunication, this edit enables you to remove items such as cars, skips and clutter that reduce the appeal of photos and make them less eye catching to potential buyers.
2. Item Addition
This is a great edit for photos where something vital is missing or damaged. An example of where an item addition edit would be useful is for damaged lawns. This edit can give unattractive gardens a complete revamp so potential buy
3. Virtual Staging
Great property photography helps potential buyers visualise a lifestyle in the property they’re looking at. It makes it easy for the potential buyer to imagine their life there. It is much more difficult for someone to do this when looking at a blank space or worse, looking at one that is unattractively presented. Virtual staging can overcome this problem by presenting the space in the property as it could be.
Other Edits include Reflection Removal which often causes an issues in tight spaces like bathrooms and Day to Dusk editing which presents the exterior in the more eye-catching setting that is a beautiful sunset.
In an instance such as this where a bathroom could not be prepared properly for photography perhaps due to existing tenants, an item removal edit is a must. Potential buyers want to be able to imagine themselves in the property and the purpose of the photos is to make it easier for them to do this.
This cluttered bathroom full of someone else’s belongings makes it much harder for the potential buyer to visualise this bathroom becoming theirs. The second, edited image is therefore far more appealing and much more likely to attract the interest of buyers.
How To Edit Your Property Photography
There are two options for editing your photos:
- DIY
- Use a professional photo editing service
DIY
It is possible to carry out photo editing on your own. Even basic photo editing is a real skill with complicated edits requiring an even more advanced skill set.
The best software for photo editing is Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. Both of these offer some free tutorials to help you learn how to use them. Beware however that it takes an average 20-30 hours to become even somewhat proficient in photo editing!
A Professional Editing Service
For a busy estate agent who is interested in saving time and effort, it will often make a lot more sense to use a professional editing service. A good service will be able to take your images, carry out all the required edits and return them to you with turnaround times as short as 4 hours.
Propertybox is such a service.
The best thing about a service like Propertybox is that it’s extremely quick and easy for you to use and they use the latest technology and techniques to return your images perfectly edited without you having to spend the time and effort it takes to edit real estate photos to a professional standard.
To get our free ebook on mastering property photography that needs less editing, click here.
