Real estate photo editingWhat every photo goes through
Every property photo I deliver goes through the same editing pass before it appears on Idealista, Airbnb, Booking or an agency website. All of it is included in the price of the shoot. Below are the twelve steps, each with an example: drag the slider to compare the frame straight from the camera with the finished photo.
Lisbon makes some of these steps harder than elsewhere. The Atlantic light is strong and hard, flats in Alfama, Graça and Mouraria have small rooms and old walls, and an apartment in Cascais or Estoril with a sea view is mostly window. Editing is where those problems get solved.
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White balance
Lisbon interiors mix light sources: cold daylight from a window facing the river, a warm ceiling lamp, a yellow bulb in the hallway. The camera records each of them in a different colour, so white walls come out cream, grey or slightly green. White balancing brings white back to white and removes the yellow cast, so the room looks the way it does when you stand in it.
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Brightness and contrast
A listing is first seen as a small thumbnail among dozens of others. A photo with the right brightness and contrast has depth and stands out in that grid; a flat, dark one gets scrolled past. I open up the shadows of the room without burning out the light from the windows.
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Sharpening
Sharpening brings out texture: the grain of a wooden floor, the pattern of azulejo tiles, the weave of a sofa. It gives the photo a clean, professional finish on a phone screen and on a printed brochure alike.
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Lens distortion correction
Rooms in historic Lisbon buildings are often narrow, so they are shot with a wide-angle lens, and a wide lens bends straight lines: walls lean, door frames curve. I correct the geometry so that verticals are vertical. A leaning wall in a photo looks like a defect of the flat, not of the lens.
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Tone
Tone sets the mood of the photo. For a sale or a rental the goal is a bright, welcoming room rather than a dramatic one: tone adjustment warms up a cold north-facing room and calms down one where the midday sun is pouring in.
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HDR and window views
The view is often what sells the property: the Tagus from a terrace in Lisbon, the ocean from a flat in Cascais, the Arrábida hills near Setúbal. A camera cannot expose the room and a bright window at the same time, so the view turns white. I shoot several exposures and blend them, so both the interior and the view outside are visible, the way your eyes see them.
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Dust spot removal
Dust on the camera sensor leaves soft grey spots that are easy to miss when shooting and obvious on a white ceiling or a clear sky. Every one of them is removed before delivery.
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TV screen replacement
A switched-off TV is a black hole in the middle of a bright room, and it often reflects the window, the flash or the photographer. Replacing the screen with a calm picture removes the reflection and keeps the eye on the room itself.
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Sky replacement
Lisbon is sunny most of the year, but a shoot booked weeks ahead can still fall on a grey day, especially between November and March. If the sky in the windows or above the terrace is overcast, I replace it with a natural blue sky, so the listing does not look as if it was shot in the rain.
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Fire in the fireplace
Houses in Sintra, quintas outside the city and many villas in Cascais have a fireplace, and in a photo an empty one is just a dark rectangle. A fire added in editing makes the living room look warm and lived-in, and shows at once that the house is good for winter evenings too.
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Colour reflections on walls
On a sunny day white walls pick up colour from everything around them: blue from the pool, green from the garden, orange from a terracotta floor. In person the eye ignores it, the camera does not. Removing these colour casts keeps white walls white.
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Scratch removal
Unless the property is brand new, its surfaces have marks: scratches on the parquet, chips on kitchen fronts, scuffs on door frames. The photos are used not only online but also in print, on brochures and banners, where every flaw is enlarged, so small marks are removed as well.