There have been several articles around lately talking about the editing/enhancing/photoshopping/etc of property listing photos, including:

Removing the Real from Real Estate.

I'm curious to hear if anyone here does edit some of their photos and even if not, where do you think the line is? Is removing a missed trashcan okay? Adding a blue sky? If the image is about showing off the house is it wrong to remove a power line/poll that is intruding on the view of the house?

It's all about marketing right? It's not like you're hiding a material fact during a showing. Considering the absolute importance of online and print photos, isn't basic adjustment or manipulation appropriate? I'm still undecided on the issue, just trying to spark some discussion.

[I made several attempts to find an existing post on retouching or using photoshop on photos, so if it's out there, please link ]

I upload photos straight from the camera. If you do it right when you take the photo no manipulation is necessary.

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The only thing I've ever removed was a piece of paper on the floor (in a corner near the couch) that I didn't notice when I took the photo.

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I crop to minimize surrounding street and sky, and do basic brightness and contrast adjustments to enhance clarity, but that's it. Depending on what web sites they are going to, I may also save the photos as 640x480 60% compressed jpg before uploading to MLS and my own site, simply to reduce file sizes and page load times. Our office uses a pro for wide angle interior photos and 360 virtual tours, and as far as I can tell, that's all he does as well.

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Interesting subject...I manage the Creative Marketing dept in our office as well. With 116 agents, we get to see a TON of different photos.

Like Ronnie G., we correct most of them for what is essentially users taking them incorrectly (great point Resale)and we may compress them to upload them to the MLS--although they've now got that straight--.

At the end of last year, I did a study of the different characteristics between the pictures of the "average" home on the MLS and on the ones who folks had requested appointments to see showings of..(we don't make people register--they can request info, showings, etc..(we had over 2000 requested showings via our website last year). The characteristics that got showings were:

Average number of photos in the MLS 4.5
Average number of photos in a listing with a showing request? 9.2

Brightness of photos increased the odds of getting a requested showing significantly. Rooms ALL needed to have clear pictures that you could easily see the furniture.

Furnished homes were far more likely to get showings than vacant.

Has anyone else done something like that that they want to share?

That having been said, why would you Photoshop a home (significantly). Yeah, you'd get some more showings, but would you make a sale..**Eric politely refrains from drawing an accurate but tasteless analogy to internet dating** (GRIN)

Eric

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Don't do anything out of the way. It becomes a huge let down when the buyers arrive at a home that doesn't look like what they drove across town to see. Then they start looking for other things that "aren't what they appear to be". Use a good camera and take a good picture.

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So you're saying that Lauren isn't really a 18 year old cheery leader?

But in all seriousness, if someone does something besides basic photo editing (contrast, brightness, coloring if you took the picture wrong, and cropping) that isn't needed (say a cat ran across your picture when you took it), then I don't know what to say. I mean, the people will see the real house if the picture is good.

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Thanks for the replies so far, seems most take an "out of camera" approach. That is typically what I see on listings, but I'm not sure it's the best. Even simple non-material steps are not being taken to enhance the pictures, including color/tonal adjustment, correcting to vertical/horizontal lines, or simply taking a dull grey sky and giving it a quit shot of blue.

For me, these immaterial adjustments are not an issue, and I'm surprised more aren't using them.

Our board has rules against such manipulation. Sure you can edit tones and highlights alright. The camera does that on it's own anyway via it's internal processor. Different brands of cameras will make the same shot look slightly different based on the algorithms they use to interpret color taken via the camera.

We aren't allowed to perform any tasks that misrepresent the property or its condition. I take this to mean that you can't add windows, walls, stretch it out, add appliances or features that aren't there, edit out detractors or do anything that materially affects the property.

As for myself, outside of cropping and minor adjustments, the only technique I use is HDR and Averageing between multiple exposures. I find it makes the pictures look a lot better. However, I don't think of this as dishonest. Photographs have physical limitations to what they can capture. They are not nearly as capable of capturing resolution, depth of field, and tonal range as the human eye. If special techniques can be used to enhance the photo to be more realistic, I think that's okay.

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I've been playing with HDR images too and do swap out grey sky, etc. but agree that you cannot add or subtract physical traits of the house. The rest is just "staging" in my opinion and well within reason.

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