While reading a recent Dick Greenberg’s blog, he challenged fellow bloggers in the ActiveRain community to present “before” and “after” pictures, while using the amazing array of photo editing tools available to photographers today.
Dick was right to mention that digital shutterbugs today, working in the digital realm, have many more options and advantages over photographers in the past, who worked with film. Add to it, the large variety of free on-line photo editing tools, and editing today can feed the imagination, and tap into creativity.
In the real estate realm, we can be easily enticed into overdoing these editing tools to puff listing photos into something with little semblance to reality. However, as Dick mentions in his blog, we don’t need to shoot as many photos like we did in film days, in hopes of getting that single shot that will work well for marketing materials, while not going overboard and taking the editing into a realm of unreality.
In my examples below, I chose to use a picture I took of the Biltmore house, in Asheville, North Carolina. You will note the original was taken from the vantage point where I captured this shot there is a great deal of landscape in the picture. While I regularly use a couple of free online editing tools, I chose www.iPiccy.com to edit this particular picture. I first used the crop tool to “zoom in” and move in closer to the house.
After the crop I sharpened the picture a bit, and I adjusted contrast and exposure. With these simple moves, the picture is much more pleasing to the eye.
iPiccy also has a litany of artistic options as well. For example in the artistic tools section, which allows use of textures. I chose “lights” and added a little work to the sky. Not enough to change the reality too much, however.
For the amateur photographer, the use of iPiccy is generally found to be exceptionally easy to use, and it can also be a lot of fun! I challenge you, along with Dick Greenberg, to give it a try!
Biltmore House (Original Photo)
Edited Photo using iPiccy editing tools
