The Edit Room

Now that you've gone through and photographed each and every room, it's time to get down to basics in the edit room.  There are many different ways to blend the photos of each room or shot together from the Internet. My preference is one called "Enfuse GUI".  This one allows you to load all the photos at one time into the program, then tell it how many photos you used to make up each shot, such as 3, 5, 7, or 9.  My preference is to use 9 different exposures with a 1 stop difference and an EV value of -7 to -1. After you have loaded all the photos into the program, you just choose how many photos are to be blended from each shot/room, the click the "Enfuse It" button at the top.  From here you just sit back and wait for Enfuse GUI to do its thing.  When it's done, the program will have blended all your photos and deposited them into a separate folder.  All you have to do now is proceed to the next step, unless there has been a mistake in the blending process, in which case, you have to find this mistake, and make corrections accordingly.

Now for the next step in the evolution of real estate photo editing. I prefer to use Adobe Lightroom, simply because I can load all my enfused photos into it at one time and use the SYNC function to the exterior and interior photos.  But, before that happens, it is a good idea if you have made presets for both exterior and interior photos.  This makes the process go much, much faster.  However, if you have not and this might be your first time to set up a preset, then its not too difficult.  Just take one of your exterior shots, edit it, then make a preset for the exterior photos.  (You can research on You Tube to find out more on how to set up a "User Present" in Adobe Lightroom.) With your preset made, just highlight all of the exterior photos and use the SYNC Function to edit all of these types of photos at the same time.  If everything goes right, you may not have to make much in changes to each photo as you scan through them.  If so, make the change, then add that change to the preset.  By about the 3rd batch of exterior photos, you may not have to make anymore changes to improve each photo, but it's still a good idea to look through each one to see if it needs much in final tweaks. You can do the same for Interior photos as well. Start with one, get it to your desire, make your preset, then go through each one making the tweaks and if needed, copy these tweaks to your preset. Once you've edited both Exterior and Interior photos, saved them to the folder you've designated, it's always a good idea to view each on separate to see if they are of the quality you and your client are looking for.  If not, I prefer to use Adobe Photoshop, instead of Lightroom, for tweaking single photographs.

Remember that if you prefer to shoot in RAW, both Lightroom and Photoshop will handle this type of photo, but you must save them to JPEG or some other type of picture photograph.  One other thing to consider is the size of the photo. RAW photos are huge and so are large JPEG's.  Even though the Internet will handle these large files, many of the public's computers will not.  So before uploading to the MLS or to your client, shrink these photos down to a size which opens quickly and is not too cumbersome to your client.  If you need the larger format, for a 4 page brochure or the like,  then save the smaller format to another folder. I use a size of 1500mp on the long side for uploading to net. This size opens fairly quickly and fits to brochures nicely.  Also, remember, many of the MLS boards around the country/world cannot handle the large formatted photos and will reject them.

Happy shooting everyone and remember, the USER PRESETS in Adobe Lightroom can be used to make presets for any type of photography, including weddings, portraiture, landscape/scenic, and still life photography.