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Photo Software for Real Estate

By
Real Estate Agent with EXIT Realty Beatrice Associates 9506757

Whats available for photo and video software?

Adobe Photoshop can cost you upwards of $600 with updates around 200 regurarly and can put quite a dent in your pocket. Never mind good video editing software.

Here are some alternatives for shelling out hundreds of dollars for photo and video editing software.

Adobe Creative Cloud-  Full Memebership 

This does ending up costing you a few dollars on a yearly basis but the outlay is only $50.00 a month.  The Adobe membership gives you access to all the Adobe products downloaded to 2 computers.   In this membership I use Adobe Phototshop and Adobe Lightroom for photo editing.  For video I use Adobe Premier, Prelude, After Effects and Audition.  I also use Indesign for brochures and Adobe Acrobat for PDF's.  I find the membership worth every penny because I use a decent amount of the programs.

Here is a recent listing with phtos edited in Adobe Photoshop.

Recent video using Adobe Premeire, Audition and After Effects

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Adobe Creative Cloud- Photography

The Photography membership gives you access to Lightroom, Bridge and Photoshop for $9.99 a month.

Adobe Elements

Adobe Elements is a consumer version of Adobe Photoshop available for $99.00.  Don't let the price fool you this is a very powerful program.  For $149.00 you can get Elements and Premier Elements so you can edit video and stills.  I used this for many years and was very happy with it.  When it cam time to upgrade I decided to go with creative cloud.

GIMP

GIMP is an open source program that comes close to Adobe Photoshop.  It is free to use as it is an open source program.  There is good documentation and video tutorials on line to help with the learning curve of the program. 

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is fee and very simple to use.  If you want to start dabbling with video edits and don't want to invest any money check it out.

A video using still to create a You Tube Video using Movie Maker

I have tried other free and low cost editors all seem to be missing some of the features I find important for Real Estate Photography editing.  If you are trying to take your real estate photos to the next level here are some great choices starting from free!!  Start giving more thought to adding video to your repetoire as more and more cameras add

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Kevin Vitali started his career as a professional photographer and as his real estate career developed he started implementing some of his photography knowledge into his marketing of homes.

Gerard Gilbers
Higher Authority Markeing - Asheboro, NC
Your Marketing Master

This is a great list of products. I have used Windows Movie Maker with Windows 7 while creating videos from scratch. I stayed away from Photoshop because of the cost but it is more dynamic than some of the other programs. The Cloud alternative can definitely be a way to save on the software costs.

Sep 29, 2013 10:12 AM
Brian Sharkey
SharkeyRE LLC - Singer Island, FL
SharkeyRE
Sep 29, 2013 11:48 PM
Kathy Stoltman
Ventura, CA
RETIRED

Thanks Kevin, on my to do list is to research and buy a photo software program.

Sep 30, 2013 01:38 AM
Kevin Vitali
EXIT Realty Beatrice Associates - Middleton, MA
Helping Massachusetts Home Buyers and Home Sellers

kathy-  Thanks for reading.  The Elements suite is a great start without breaking the bank.

Sep 30, 2013 02:42 AM
Jeremy De La Garza
Corpus Christi Realty Group - Corpus Christi, TX
Corpus Christi, TX

Great post and information Kevin. I use aperture to edit my photos and really like the improvement it helps make. 

Sep 30, 2013 03:09 AM
CA COASTAL ESTATES Lauren Selinsky Perez CRS
California Coastal Estates - Aliso Viejo, CA
"Your Real Estate Broker" #oclauren
Thanks Kevin! Great info! But $50 a month is still 600- a year. Lol
Sep 30, 2013 12:14 PM
Kevin Vitali
EXIT Realty Beatrice Associates - Middleton, MA
Helping Massachusetts Home Buyers and Home Sellers

Lauren-  The stand alone Photoshop to purchase is over $600.00.  I use 5 additional programs that would have a cost of over $2000.00 to purchase.  I am starting to lean heavily towards video and the tools that Adobe offers is top notch.

While $50 is a lot a month, I would be spending more to purchase and upgrade regurarly.

Of course that option may not be for everyone, that why I posted less expensive alternatives.

 

 

 

Jeremy-  Sorry for not mentioning anything about Apple.  Just not familiar with their software.  Apple does have great video editing software as well.

 

Oct 01, 2013 12:06 AM
Ralph Gorgoglione
Metro Life Homes - Palm Springs, CA
California and Hawaii Real Estate (310) 497-9407

Kevin, it looks like your subscription to Adobe Cloud really paid off-- those pictures look amazing. Yes, Adobe Cloud looks like it is a fantastic value-- purchasing all those products could otherwise cost thousands. Thanks for sharing!

Oct 01, 2013 01:34 PM
Lee Jinks
Jinks Realty - McAllen, TX

I use an iMac, but chose Lightroom over Aperture more because of my real estate photography.  I believe it's probably more a preference than any specific features each program offers.  I too opted for Creative Cloud, though I really don't use much beyond Lightroom and Photoshop.  I'll probably go with the $9.99 per month version when my initial period is over.

Before getting Lightroom and Photoshop, I was concerned about learning to use them.  I was surprised at how quickly I picked them both up.  Besides, there's lots of training videos by Adobe as well as special techniques taught by people on YouTube.

Thanks Kevin.

Oct 01, 2013 02:10 PM
Paul Viau
Nova Scotia Real Estate Blog - Halifax, NS
Nova Scotia Real Estate Blog + Photo Services

I use Lightroom and will stick to it's easy to use format.  I thought it would be difficult to use , but in literally 1 hr I had it mastered. You can literally take an overexposed shot and tame it and make it in to beautiful photo .  Elements 11 is good but not nearly as good as Lightroom .  Both around $100 and change.

 

Oct 04, 2013 03:39 AM
Elizabeth Bouchard
Samson Properties - Arlington, VA
Associate Broker in Northern Virginia, DC and MD

I have used Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements for years - recently learned about Lightroom from a photography course and have been dabbling with it.  I also use Photo Story 3 for Windows to make stills into videos but I will have to check out Movie Maker - I love your text overlays.

Oct 04, 2013 05:09 AM
Kevin Vitali
EXIT Realty Beatrice Associates - Middleton, MA
Helping Massachusetts Home Buyers and Home Sellers

I think if you have absolutely no editing experience then start with Adobe Elements.  For real estate agents that may be all they ever need.  Lightroom is an image catalog with some editing capablilities.

Oct 04, 2013 05:21 AM
Sandy Acevedo
951-290-8588 - Chino Hills, CA
RE/MAX Masters, Inland Empire Homes for Sale

Hi Kevin, These are valuable ideas, since you have done the research. Video is becoming more and more important to seo. Thanks.

Oct 06, 2013 10:04 AM
Wayne Johnson
Coldwell Banker D'Ann Harper REALTORS® - San Antonio, TX
San Antonio REALTOR, San Antonio Homes For Sale
Kevin-thanks for the list of programs for photo and video. I'll be taking a look at GIMP. The name itself has me intrigued.
Oct 20, 2013 04:30 AM
Kevin Vitali
EXIT Realty Beatrice Associates - Middleton, MA
Helping Massachusetts Home Buyers and Home Sellers

Good luck with it Wayne.

Oct 20, 2013 04:56 AM
Jon Zolsky, Daytona Beach, FL
Daytona Condo Realty, 386-405-4408 - Daytona Beach, FL
Buy Daytona condos for heavenly good prices

kevin - I came here after reading a blog by Ted baker, and I am glad I did. I will try some stuff. I, actually, have Photoshop, but I doubt I use eve 1% of its capabilities.

Nov 22, 2013 11:34 PM
Kevin Vitali
EXIT Realty Beatrice Associates - Middleton, MA
Helping Massachusetts Home Buyers and Home Sellers

Jon-  Photoshop can be amazing.  Everything gets run through Photoshop.  If you have the ability to shoot in RAW try to do your exits in Adobe Raw (part of Photoshop) it is non- destructive editing.  Exposure, highlight and shadow correction is amazing.  One of my favorite features is the skew feature Adobe Phtoshop- Transform/skew tutorial for Real Estate Photography in Photoshop.  Quickly straighten those vertical lines. 

Photoshop is great because you can find tutorial videos for almost anything you want.

Check out my Google+ Community Google+ Community- Photography for Real Estate.

Nov 23, 2013 12:19 AM
Jon Zolsky, Daytona Beach, FL
Daytona Condo Realty, 386-405-4408 - Daytona Beach, FL
Buy Daytona condos for heavenly good prices

Kevin - thank you so much, I will follow the link and read about it. These falling vertical lines are an issue for me when shooting real estate photos. Even with good camera (Canon Mark 5 II) and good lenses.

Nov 24, 2013 08:06 AM
Kevin Vitali
EXIT Realty Beatrice Associates - Middleton, MA
Helping Massachusetts Home Buyers and Home Sellers

The skew feature will quickly fix verticals that arent vertical.  You are working fast to get the photosand the screen is so small its hard to get perfect verticals.

Another problem inherent with any wide angle lens especially zooms is barrell distortion ( ) towards the outer edges.  Adobe has lens presets that will correct that auomatically if you choose to use it.  Quick and simple.

 

Nov 24, 2013 11:00 PM
Anonymous
Radu Stefan

Great article, Kevin. Have you also checked out BatchPhoto?
http://www.batchphoto.com/features.html

It's a bulk photo editing tool that is quite useful when you have to do resizing, date/time stamping, watermarking and so on.

Nov 19, 2015 08:50 PM
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