Pimp My Listing Photo
Pimping My Mom
March 21st, 2008 Pimp My Listing Photo No Comments »
Heres the photo my Mom (or for my six New Zealand readers Mum) sent me.
Attached is a pretty good picture of the townhouses, could you please blue the sky for me - not too bright though. Its a late afternoon shot so the sky was bright and pale. Im starting to take pictures for the advertising for the next door townhouse - the ex-owner is planning to move out around the 20th of next month, then we can get to and start filling it with furniture and taking some pictures too. We live in the right hand one and have bought the middle one
Color filled the sky, graduated blue filter on the sky, brightened and then turned the warmth up a lot to get a more twilighty feel.
Now I have to wait and see if Im ever allowed home.
Interested in having your listing photo Pimped? Email me a maximum file size image and Ill see what I can do. I do email back the edited photo as a max image too. Enjoy!
Just A Quiet Day Screaming Into Pillows About The Sky
February 27th, 2008 Photography, Pimp My Listing Photo, Rules of Good Photos 3 Comments »
First up, if today was sunny, none of this would be happening.
Let me correct that…
…I was told NOT to come and been held off for two weeks of pretty good weather, and now we have a week of crap weather and I’m told to come, right away!
Anyway… overcast day, but gotta get something up for photos ASAP.
I get a minor break in the sky for all of two minutes and get this…
Which is about as exciting as a bucket of dirt.
Can yo’ feel da love in dis photo? Me neither. I keep saying real estate photos don’t need to be perfect, but they need to make you feel good.
Seriously… BLEAUGH!
So I start my usual editing thing, but to be honest…
It’s just not working today…
The problem is all the dang trees with no leaves in the background. Welcome to fluffy bunnies New fluffy bunnies England in fluffy bunnies Winter. You simply can’t “cut around them” and paste a different sky into the photo. There are simply hundreds of little tiny pieces of sky inbetween the tree branches. It’s mindlessly impossible to edit this way.
My usual edit technique is to color change the white sky to a blue, then apply a Graduated Blue filter to it all. But this eludes me today as the actual sky is a mix of white/gray clouds with hints of blue in spots. It shows up as obvious editing no matter how I try.
Time for a new tactic…
Just selected the entire sky trees and all. Then did a RGB tweak. RGB standing for Red/Green/Blue. It’s counter-intuitive what you do here – you don’t dial the blue UP, but you dial the red and green DOWN. Just a squeeze, littl’ dab will do ya. It’s like drinking. Two drinks and you’re having a good time, six drinks and you’re kneeling in the bathroom shouting for Ralph.
The net result is that the clouds become kinda less dense and oppressive. More blue, less white = more happy = better.
I brightened up the photo a lot and did the Skylight Filter as well.
Anyway the good news is that after messing about I got a half decent lead photo.
The bad news is that I’m serving up dog food as meatloaf… this is NOT Filet Mignon. The real solution is as I’ve said before…
Pimping The Kitchen - A Step By Step Guide
February 4th, 2008 Pimp My Listing Photo No Comments »
From Jonathan Dalton in Phoenix.
“Hey, mate … can you repair the verticals on this? I actually tried getting down lower than normal height to get a different perspective. See? I do read you!”
Firstly lookie here ——————->
See the curve on the cabinet edge? Thats fisheye distortion. It’s actually like the center of the photo is bulging out slightly, but you really only notice it on the left side of this photo.
Here’s the Fisheye Correction Tool in PaintShopPro X2. On the menu across the top hit “Adjust” and “Fisheye” is the second from the bottom.
Then just fiddle with the field of view number until it looks right. I find 30 is the exact fix for my Canon PowerShot SD800 and it seemed to do the trick here as well. I never tick off “Preserve Central Scale” as it seems to fuzz out the edges of the photo. We always correct fisheye as a first order of business.
Step two is to correct the verticals. This image is a thumbnail you can blow all the way up to see what’s going on. It’s a simple task to click and drag the four corner landmarks into position and then double click and it’s done.
I find the same method works for 99% of my photos. First I keep the top and bottom lines parallel and running across the top and bottom of the photo. Then drag the landmark in a bit to try and make the sides of the tool appear to be parallel to the verticals you are correcting in the photo.
In this case the vertical I worked off was the edge of the cabinet on the left. The same one we noticed the fisheye on. Then I bought the landmark on the bottom right in by the same amount as the bottom left landmark was. Double click and we’re done!
At this point I did what Jonathan asked me to. But do you think I’m gonna stop there?
I’m down with OPP. Do you know me?
I’m down with OPP. Do you know me?
I’m down with OPP. Do you know me?
That’s right kiddies – I’ve got my hands on Other Peoples Photographs and you don’t rub the lamp unless you want the genie.
Next step, it’s simple and you’ll like it. Histrogram tweaking!
On the top menu… “Adjust” —> “Brightness and Contrast” —> “Histrogram Adjustment”.
95% of the time it seems to automatically pop out a great first time fix that brightens up the photo and keeps it looking natural. If doesn’t look right, just have a fiddle with the sliders.
After that we have a slightly darker corner in the kitchen left, so we’re going to “Adjust” —> “Fill Flash”.
This will add a little more brightness to darker areas of the photo, kinda as if you had a better flash equipped.
The trick here is do it this gently. Don’t pour it on here, a little dab will do ya. You do need some shadows to make the picture defined and clear. Plus it does start looking a little artificial if you really pound on adding Fill Flash.
Here’s the final edit next to the start photo. (So you poor babies don’t have to scroll up to compare.) I did Clone out that little white dot on the counter. Hard to talk about that in a blog post. Time to learn video I guess. 
And we’re done! Actual editing time – about 3 minutes. Actual time to write this post – grrrrr.
Interested in having your listing photo Pimped? Email me a maximum file size image and I’ll see what I can do. I do email back the edited photo as a max image too. Enjoy!
Pimping Emily Part 2
January 31st, 2008 Pimp My Listing Photo No Comments »
Emily went back and reshot the photo.
All in all it’s a lot less cluttered and she’s further back getting more of the room in. Also the window is better controlled and isn’t blown out.
Here’s my edit.
A quick fix for the verticals with the perspective correction tool.
A one click fix for the overall light balance on the histrogram.
A little dab of more brightness and warmth. It’s a slight “honey” tone added.
Overall it’s a much better photo and was the right choice to reshoot it.
Very Vintage Vegas Gets Pimped
January 16th, 2008 Pimp My Listing Photo No Comments »
Apparently I have minimal hope of people emailing me photos for this post. They just paste photos on their blogs and light up the Bat Signal in the sky for me.
From Jack LeVine at Very Vintage Vegas… comes the trouble shot.
Actually this is a pretty decent photo to have to edit. Lots of good here. Staging is great, it’s decluttered but not sterile.
I usually leave the coffee pot and the thingy that holds the big spoons and whatnot out too. I do magic the dish towels off the stove though. Dish towels = work, and no work is performed in our magical kitchen
The bad. Blown out window and not much we can do about it in editing. Seems a little washed out, some perspective issues.
Here’s my edit.
My guess is that Jack is pretty tall. Around 6’2’ or 6’3” and holding the camera at eye level. So you get the feeling of shooting “down” into the room.
This makes the verticals all spread apart towards the top of the photo. I corrected some of it, but not all. It’s a balance between fixing it all the way and not “scrunching up” the photo and making the kitchen look weird and small. (The shooting solution is hold the camera lower down and/or on a tripod.)
After that it’s a balancing act between getting more color into the photo and keeping it looking natural. Tools used were “fade correction”, “color balance”, increased saturation a tad and then sharpened. The tricky bit is keeping the whites white, while getting the yellow walls a richer yellow.
Usually I try and “warm up” rooms in editing, but this seemed like a cool relaxed kitchen, so left it understated and hope that it’s natural and true to life colors.
Pimp My Listing Photo - Jim Duncan Gets A Turn In The Barrel
January 13th, 2008 Pimp My Listing Photo 1 Comment »
I’m offended! Jim Duncan speaking to other photographers while I am only six states away! Seriously what’s this about?
The start photo…
A little dark, a little fuzzy and some converging verticals.
The “After” photo.
After what? Too much candy floss and a ride on the Atomic Twister?
At least the verticals are fixed.
I took a crack at it.
Sharpening. Histrogram (bright/mid-tone/shadow) tweak. Straightened the photo and corrected verticals. Dialed up some Skylight filter and after all that the sky was fully washed out, so replaced the sky with a double scoop of graduated blue.
Sky edits… I’m starting to feel like I’m on Nip/Tuck and it’s my “boob job”.
So anyway…
Jim – WHAT SAY YOU?!
EDIT – Jim emailed me the full image and here is my final effort.
I decided the first effort leaned towards stark white trim and a little too “popping”. Up way late… having a drink… seemed good at the time.
It took a ton of do-overs, but I managed to pull an insane sky edit off this time around. The clouds and even the distant trees manage to pull through to the final image.
And the C21 sign took a walk.
Pimp My Photo - Phoenix Skyline
January 9th, 2008 Pimp My Listing Photo No Comments »
From Jonathan Dalton who is enjoying the complete retooling of his website as he moves from Century 21 to RE/MAX.
“So, Mr. Miracle Worker …
… can you make the sky blue(r) in this one? I have to redo my banner since I was silly enough to put my brokerage name on it.”
The original seemed hazy so used a vivid filter on the whole photo. Replaced the sky with a lighter blue, that also accidently lightened up the foreground dark blues/grays in a way I liked, so I kept it in. After that tweak the sky to graduate the blue. The boring part was cloning out all the noise in the sky around the skyline. The noise doesn’t really show up in the original, but looked obviously bad after the sky change. Still some odd bits in the sky left, but ultra fiddly to clear up and make it look it natural.
I think it’s an overall improvement in vibe. The first looks smog/hazy “storms a comin” and the edited version a bit cleaner and brighter.
Bad MLS Photo of the Day: Sunday Edition
January 7th, 2008 Bad MLS Photo of the Day, Pimp My Listing Photo No Comments »
That’s the hole in the fence the kids come though to collect all the baseballs that hit your house.
From Nick Bastain.
I call this filter “Prozac Blue”.
Sent in by Eric Lee.
Widescreen shot of a doorway…
Yay Lisa Haas.
Whoa there you are! Smashing baby! Yeah! You. Are. A. Sexy. Beast!
You’re an animal! You’re an animal! You’re a tiger!
Sent in by Steve Hill.
To the lifeboats!
From Jennifer Kirby.
Is that a bong?
Sent in by Les Sulgrove.
HOLY @$#% BRACE THE CEILING!
From Mark The House Guy.
We try not so much to think of it as a fireplace, more as a big hole in the wall surrounded by bricks.
Sent in by Debbie Pastori.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
See more Bad MLS Photo of the Day, Rules of Good Photos. Problem photo? Try Pimp My Listing Photo or if in Connecticut you can even check on My Services.
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Blown Out Windows In Photos (aka I Pimp Ardell)
January 7th, 2008 Photography, Pimp My Listing Photo, Rules of Good Photos 1 Comment »
Just for the record, Ardell does some nice photo work. So this isn’t an assassination attempt. But if you rub the lamp Ardell, you no complain if the genie appears. 
“I want to take this master bedroom shot with the view showing through the open double doors. I can lighten up the photo after the fact, But how do you do that without totally washing out the view?”
…and she baits the hook…
“Lord knows I don’t want to make Athol Kay’s Bad MLS photo of the Day blog category. Maybe Athol will stop by with some tips on this problem.”
…And I wrote an entire blog post in her comments.
Hi Ardell,
if it makes you feel any better, this is very common and even pros struggle with this issue. The problem is the great big ball of fire in the sky is very very bright lighting up outside, and the inside of the room is not so bright. The camera has to equalize the light balance and you tend to get a darkish room and a very bright blown out window.
Multiple ways to work on this problem.
Option 1. Carry a crapload of lighting gear and light up the inside of the room. This does help a good deal, but even then SUN > all your lights combined.
Option 2. Shoot when it is less bright outside. I.e. overcast day, or twilight. This is the easy way!
Option 3. Cut and paste editing. Use a tripod and shoot two photos from exactly the same position. One with the camera on a higher exposure setting, one on a lower one. Then in editing cut the window out of the lower exposure shot, and paste it over the windows on the higher exposure shot. This is unbelievably hard to do unless you have the hands of a heart surgeon.
Option 4. Selective editing on a single photo. Select everything other than the window areas of the photo. Then increase the light in the photo. Usually there is a selection toggle you can use to do this. i.e. select the window area vs everything but the window area.
Option 5. HDR. Stands for High Dynamic Range. Similar to the cut and paste editing technique, you set the tripod up and then take multiple photos at a variety of exposure settings. Then using HDR software you make a final alignment of the photos and combine the multiple images into a single image with the full color spread. This tends to create a slightly artificial look to the photo. I’ve had some great results from it, and total bombs.
Option 6. Like Mark suggested, get a light reading to properly expose for the windows and then flash fill the interior. In editing your software may even have an option called “Flash Fill” or something similar.
Option 7. In editing if you start fiddling with the brightness histogram stuff you can pull up the darker areas of the photo and leave the brighter ones the same.
Generally speaking the pros split up into those that like to set up a lot of lights, and those that like to use heavy duty software. (HDR images can take a couple minutes processing time for example) No real right or wrong answer.
Practically speaking what works great for exterior shooting sucks for interior shooting, and vice a versa. Sometimes you just have to go back and reshoot.
Anyway, having a crack at editing…
Attempt at pimping #1.
I straighten the photo. We lose some of the room, but the focus is the view.
I section off the windows, invert the selection and start dialing up the brightness. Going really well until I start getting too fancy and end up having to clone brush out some of the window edge stray pixels after I try and tweak up the blues.
It’s brighter, but a couple passes of sharpening and noise removal kinda dull out the clarity of the view.
Botched it!
Pimping attempt #2.
Straighten. Histogram auto fix. Still not enough…
Select windows, invert selection. Up the brightness more.
Whole photo with the Brilliance and Warmth filter, kinda heavy handed on that one. That’s what is giving the yellow/honey tone.
High pass sharpening. Select windows, invert selection, high pass noise reduction.
At this point the walls and ceiling look indistinct, so use the Clarity tool to throw some “fake shadows” to get a little more definition back.
Final thought. This is too much work. The second attempt is better than the original, but I have a vague sense that after a while I’m just rearranging problems than fixing them. Pushing close to the line of looking not quite natural.
Buy some lights Ardell!
Pimp My Listing Photo #2
December 31st, 2007 Pimp My Listing Photo No Comments »
It seems like every shoot is on a terrible deadline and battling the weather forecast. I get called yesterday to shoot this home. I try and contact the home owners and get voice mail, leave a message and never get called back. I follow up this morning and finally get in contact.
Uh-oh, home owner doesn’t want the shoot until Wednesday… home schooling, holiday, dogs, boxes everywhere. Listing agent needs a photo up within 24 hours or MLS fines.
And welcome to New England, but we’ve got a week of garbage weather coming. Today, as in right now, is the day if we want a front shot. I say “I’ll be right over” to do the front, and we’ll do interiors on Wednesday. I arrive and the home owner is G-O-N-E. But somehow three vehicles and a trailer parked on the road remain.
Ugh.
Well this is what I’ve got to work with. The sun will never hit the front of the house, so major shadow issues. We got some sun which is good, but the bright sky and snow cover are dominant. The clouds on the right hand side turned grey and icky within a few minutes of the shot and rolled over the house.
And to be fair, I’m doing favors here. I don’t mind making two trips if I screw up, this is for courtesy.
The Pimpin’ comes in some very simple edits. A high pass sharpening makes the roof shingles and siding snap into focus better.
Slight tweaks correcting to straighten the photo and get the verticals more vertical. You’ll notice it most in the way the tree looks straighter.
The big gains come in dialing up the strength of the mid-tones – the siding brightens but leaves the sky, snow and dark areas untouched. The final touch comes in a scoop of the Skylight filter adding some “happy yellow” tones. Made the letterbox and light fixture pop too.
Was tempting to crop the cars out more, but looked unbalanced and sliced out the sky and lawn a bit much. The front door pulls the eye pretty well I think.
Interested in having your listing photo Pimped? Email me a maximum file size image and I’ll see what I can do. I do email back the edited photo as a max image too. Enjoy!
