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Newbie Real Estate Photo Help


T

Tomjones2787

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Hello
First post here, I have been struggling with my photography skill and more importantly my photoshop skills. I have uploaded a few pictures of a house I have done. First is untouched and second is making adjustments using RAW only. I would love any input as to how I have done. Is there anything I have done too much of in the photos or not enough of? I guess I just need to know where to go from here. How do I improve. I really want my photos to stand out to my potential buyers!

Thank you in advance for any tips!


DJI_0016_zps6ykso70d.jpg~original.jpeg

DJI_0016_2_zpsksfwq7zg.jpg~original.jpeg

DJI_0009_zpsakf6g4yg.jpg~original.jpeg

DJI_0009_1_zpscv8i3lsg.jpg~original.jpeg
 
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Three things immediately jump out at me:

1. Large areas of the snow are completely blown out (ie, are clipping the highlights). People want to see texture from the shadows all the way up to the highlights. Without seeing your raw files for these images, I can't tell if this happened at the time you took the picture, or afterwards, when you were processing it. If you could upload one of the raw files, it would be much easier to diagnose what's going on. To do so, just zip it and upload it to the forum in the same way you uploaded these pix. The only difference is that you will see a big question mark in the upload icon box. Just ignore it, and all will be well.

2. In the 1st and 2nd pix you posted, you have diverging vertical lines, a horizon that isn't level and appears to be slightly curved. One should *always* correct for lens distortion (ie, curved straight lines), and when you are shooting nearly horizontally (ie, not the aerial shot), you should also correct the converging / diverging verticals and the level horizon. I don't know what sort of camera you are using, but that amount of lens distortion *really* surprises me. Even in the cheapest of modern DSLRs and smart phones, one rarely sees that much curvature of straight lines. Again, post the raw file, and I'll walk you through these issues.

3. I'm going out on a limb, but to me, the color of the dirt / gravel looks too yellow. From the trees, snow, and lay of the land, if I had to guess, that picture was probably taken in either central or northern Mass or extreme southern NH, and, I've never seen dirt/gravel of that color in that area. I could be totally wrong about the location, but let me know.


HTH,

Tom M
 
Tom thank you for the reply. You are spot on! Central Massachusetts. Are you nearby? Anyways I will post the raw files when I get home. I did not notice the curve of the Horizon until you had pointed it out to me. What is the technique involved at correcting the curve?
 
Tom,

I am unable to upload both the .zip or the .dng file. I have tried it as an attachment , through insert image, and also through my photobucket. Am I missing something? Through the attachment box i click add files navigate to my file folder click upload, it shows a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. When it completes nothing shows up in my home folder.

Is there another way? or please advise what I am missing.

Thank You
 
For me the house is to far away, i appreciate you need to show all of the house but the heli shot gives the size - crop out some of the sides maybe, the PS adjustments look fine.
 
Tomjones2787 said:
Tom thank you for the reply. You are spot on! Central Massachusetts. Are you nearby? Anyways I will post the raw files when I get home. I did not notice the curve of the Horizon until you had pointed it out to me. What is the technique involved at correcting the curve?
Click to expand...
I thought it had to be somewhere around there. I know that area pretty well because I used to have two very good friends that lived near there. One on the faculty at Smith and the other at WPI in Worcester so I criss-crossed central MA many times. I also used to work in Chelmsford. Now, I'm down in DC.

Anyway, the pix as they stand certainly aren't bad, but let's talk about how to remove the distortions and make them really shine after I see the raw files.

Tom M
 
PS - Sorry. I just saw your post at 7:34 last evening. Sometimes the forum software balks if the file size is too large, so why don't you upload the raw file to Dropbox or one of the other large-file sharing services and either post the link, or send me a PM with the link.

BTW, unless you are using a camera whose raw files can't be read by the latest version of ACR, don't bother sending the DNG file ... it already has some adjustments baked in.

Tom
 
Good Morning, Tom. Thanks for the files. I was able to download them with no problem.

Since you didn't send raw files, I take it that the latest version of ACR can't read raw files from your camera, so you converted them to DNG's? Is that right? If so, what type of camera is it?

Tom
 
Got it. That's cool. I also figured it out from the EXIF info embedded in the files you put in Dropbox.

From a quick look at the files it appears that the aerial shot was overexposed in the camera to the point of clipping the highlights, but the on-ground shot was bright but with not seriously clipped.

Unfortunately, I've got to run but will get back to u this afternoon.

Cheers,

Tom
 
Hey, Tom - I had a few minutes to tweak your shot of the front of the house, and I've attached what I came up with. Basically, in ACR, I made the following changes:

1) First, I straightened the verticals and horizon, and reduced the bit of lens curvature that was present.

2) Cropped the image tighter, as Paul suggested, but I thought it still important to show some of the nice background, so I didn't go too tight.

3) Reduced the "exposure" setting and tweaked the tonal adjustments in the "Basic" tab to recover more of the highlight detail in the snow while simultaneously keeping the shadows from going too dark.

4) Reduced the "vibrance" and increased the "saturation" to compensate for the reduction in vibrance and then get a bit more saturation in the saturated colors without bringing false color into the weakly saturated areas like the driveway.

I then made a few changes in PS to even out the lighting a bit, but the above were the major changes I made.

Note that rather than trying to juice up the color of the house in ACR, I intentionally didn't change the color balance from the in-camera setting. This let the front of the house (which is in shadow) continue to have a slight blue cast, which is exactly what one expects on a winter day with blue skies and snow on the ground. There are different opinions on this. Leaving it as is conveys a subliminal feeling of the photo being unmanipulated to the viewers, but doing so is a judgement call: If you prefer the house colors warmer, rather than warming up everything in the photo using the global adjustments in ACR, in PS, I would select just the house, and then warm it up separately, leaving the blues of the winter day unchanged in the rest of the scene.

See what you think. Overall, the changes that I am suggesting aren''t that big, but I think they give a more professional appearance.

HTH,

Tom M

PS - I also attached the original raw conversion for quick-side-by-side reference.
 

Attachments

  • DJI_0016dng-acr_tjm01-ps01a_sRGB-01.jpg
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  • DJI_0016_2_zpsksfwq7zg.jpg~original.jpeg
    DJI_0016_2_zpsksfwq7zg.jpg~original.jpeg
    246.5 KB · Views: 1
  • DJI_0016dng-acr_tjm01-ps01a_sRGB-02.jpg
    DJI_0016dng-acr_tjm01-ps01a_sRGB-02.jpg
    5.6 MB · Views: 3
BTW, FWIW, to my eye, even after I tried to correct both the geometric lens distortions as well as the perspective distortion, as best I could with simple adjustments in ACR, the shape of the house seems a bit odd to my eye, as well as when I lay a grid pattern over the image. My guess is that the lens has some residual higher order distortions (eg, "moustache distortion" - Google it) that aren't corrected by the lens profile for it in ACR. The other possibility is that one just isn't used to seeing good architectural images with any distortion, whatsoever, and it's such a wide angle lens (20 mm equivalent) that one has to stand closer to the subject than usual, and this introduces perspective distortions that just don't come out without a lot of work.

Probably, there won't be many people that see this, but I find it vaguely disconcerting and not very inviting. If you are interested in pursuing this for selected shots in the future, the tool you will want to become familiar with is the "Adaptive Wide Angle" filter ( introduction/tutorial here - the good "stuff" begins around 1:30 into the video )

Tom M
 
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PPS - If the video system that you are editing these pix on hasn't been independently calibrated (ie, with a hardware calibrator) recently, it easily could be slightly misleading you about colors and tonalities. If that's the case, always double check your tweaks on a consumer display that is known to have excellent color calibration such as the current (or previous) generation of iPads or iPhones.

Tom
 
The quadcopter shot was overexposed (in camera) to a greater degree than the front view shot, and had problems with the extremely dark shadows in the woods, but, OTOH, lens and geometric distortions are much less important in this shot because of the increased distance and the knowledge that this is an unusual perspective from which to view a house.

So, my main effort on this shot was to rein in the extremes of contrast, and as in the front view, keep the usual blue winter shadows from negatively impacting the color of the house without making everything else (eg, the driveway, trees, etc.) from becoming too yellowish. Unfortunately, there are regions of the snow that are completely blown out (ie, clipped to RGB = 255,255,255), and this indirectly makes processing of the other parts of the image more difficult, but I was at least able to bring out a bit more realistic detail in the slightly darker areas of the snow. It isn't great, but it was the best I could do in a limited amount of time.

Compared to your front view image, for this shot, I couldn't do almost everything in ACR, and had to do considerably more in PS. I suggest that you see if there is an exposure compensation adjustment on that camera, and be sure to dial it down a bit in situations like this.

HTH,

Tom

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Everyone stole my thunder on this, but that's an encouraging testament to the retouching fundamentals here. To reiterate what was said, the things that immediately bothered me were blown out white levels/exposure, and lack of cropping. If I was really serious about the image, I might make a curves adjustment layer, and using specific color channels, maybe pump the color up a bit on those, mask it, and paint back in areas that need some color depth. These are too high contrast for my taste.
 
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