How to shoot and edit real estate photos

[Entropy512 (Andy Dodd)]

@KristijanZic

@Entropy512

As Todd has pointed out, real estate photography is about marketing, and marketing is rarely about realism. That is why aggressive dynamic range compression and local tonemapping is standard practice in real estate photography nowadays.

Man, I’ve shoot real estate where I’ve had to dismantle the bed and bring it to another bedroom to shoot lol. When guests arrive they have one bed and a two of those inflatable mattresses just thrown on the floor in the other rooms. But yeah, the most important thing is to fake everything, the lights, the amount of space, the vibrance, whatever you can to get the ppl to book.

It sounds like you’ve shot for AirBNB or Vrbo owners.

If you look through AirBNB listings or VRBO listings, aggressive tonemapping that Aurelien declares to be garbage is standard operating practice. Anyone who uses global tonemapping alone to meet his purist worldview will have listings that look bland and lifeless and won’t get many bookings unless everything else is full-up.

You make a good point that AirBNB and VRBO owners do sometimes go too far - like hiding the fact that the common room in their “sleeps 6” listing has seating for two, and the only televisions are in the bedrooms. But creative lighting to the point of being unrealistic - again, that’s SOP in that industry and adopting the purist view will lead to you failing.