Table of Contents
- 11 Proven Interior Real Estate Photo Editing Techniques
- Tips for Editing Interior Real Estate Photography
- Outsourcing Your Interior Photo Editing to PhotoUp
Interior real estate photography plays a crucial role in marketing properties. Stunning photos capture potential buyers’ attention and help real estate agents showcase properties at their best.
To create visually appealing and professional images, editing is a vital part of the process.
In this guide, we’ll explore 11 of the most proven interior real estate photo editing techniques that can help elevate your photos and make your interiors shine.
We’ll also cover how you can save time and money on editing while focusing on what you do best—shooting more properties.
Let’s get started!
11 Proven Interior Real Estate Photo Editing Techniques
Mastering interior real estate photo editing is key to producing visually appealing photos that help properties sell faster.
With proven techniques such as brightness and exposure adjustments, color correction, perspective correction, and more, photographers can significantly enhance the appeal of their interior shots.
Whether you’re a seasoned photographer or a newcomer to real estate photography, these 11 tips will help you achieve polished and professional results.
1. Brightness and Exposure Adjustments
Adjusting the brightness and exposure is often the first step in photo editing. It’s essential to ensure that your image is well-lit without being overexposed or underexposed.
Exposure adjustments help bring out details in the shadows and highlights, making the photo look more natural and appealing. Increasing brightness without losing detail can improve the overall appeal of the image, making the space appear inviting.
Tip: Use a combination of global exposure adjustments and local adjustments (like the graduated filter or adjustment brush) to brighten specific areas, such as dark corners or shadowed walls.
For more details, check out our video tutorial on how to brighten a photo in Photoshop:
2. Color Correction
Color correction is an essential technique for achieving a balanced and realistic look.
Different lighting conditions, such as fluorescent or incandescent lighting, can cause color imbalances, making the photo appear too warm or too cool.
Correcting these colors ensures the space looks true to life, without unnatural tints.
Tip: Use the HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Luminance) panel to fine-tune specific colors in the image. Adjust the saturation of greens, reds, and blues to match the actual interior tones of the space.
To learn how to adjust the colors and make your real estate photos pop, check out our tutorial on how to color correct in Photoshop.
3. Adjusting the White Balance
White balance adjustments help remove color casts caused by artificial lighting.
Without proper white balance, interior photos can look overly yellow, blue, or green, which can make a room appear uninviting.
Proper white balance ensures that whites and neutrals look accurate, allowing the colors of furniture and decor to pop.
Tip: Set the white balance based on the light source in the room (e.g., tungsten for incandescent lighting, daylight for natural light) to get more natural-looking results.
To learn how to perform this technique, check out our video tutorial on how to adjust white balance in Photoshop:
4. Perspective Correction
Perspective correction is particularly important for interior shots.
Wide-angle lenses, which are often used in real estate photography to capture more of the room, can distort the image by making vertical lines appear slanted.
This can create an unrealistic representation of the space.
Tip: Use the “Lens Correction” tool in Lightroom or Photoshop to correct distortion and ensure that walls and furniture appear straight. Use the upright tool or manual adjustment sliders to fine-tune the image’s perspective.
In this video, we walk you through how to straighten verticals in Photoshop:
5. Color Cast Removal
A color cast is an unwanted color tint caused by lighting or the camera’s sensor.
Here are some situations where color cast can appear:
- Fluorescent bulbs can produce a bluish tinge
- Dark window tint films can alter the color of a beige-colored wall
- Gray skies outside may dull the otherwise bright wall inside
- Even the color settings of the camera can affect the natural colors of the home
Overall, color cast can make photos look unnatural and unappealing. Removing this color cast ensures that the colors in your image appear neutral and true to life.
Tip: Use the “Auto White Balance” function or manually adjust the temperature and tint sliders to remove any unwanted color casts and restore the image to a natural look.
To learn how to do this, check out our video tutorial on how to easily remove color cast from real estate images in Photoshop:
6. HDR Editing
High Dynamic Range (HDR) editing allows you to blend multiple exposures to create an image with more balanced lighting and greater detail.
This technique is especially useful in real estate photography, where lighting conditions can vary drastically between bright windows and dark interior spaces.
Tip: Use HDR software, Lightroom, or Photoshop to combine multiple exposures, ensuring that both highlights and shadows are well-exposed and rich in detail.
To learn how to get started editing HDR photos, check out our video tutorial on how to edit HDR photos in Lightroom:
Have You Ever Thought To
Outsource Photo Editing?
Try it today with 10 free edits from three professional photo editors.
7. Window Masking
In many interior photos, windows often appear overexposed while the room’s interior is underexposed, making the view outside appear washed out.
Window masking allows you to separate the window area from the rest of the image and adjust the exposure levels to create a balanced image with a well-exposed interior and a clear view of the outside.
Tip: Use Layer Masks in Photoshop or Lightroom to adjust the exposure and saturation of the window area, making sure the outside view is visible while the interior stays well-lit.
For more information, check out our video demo on how to mask windows in Photoshop:
8. Fixing Flash Shadows
Flash photography can create harsh shadows, especially in areas like corners, under furniture, and on walls.
These shadows can detract from the overall quality of your images, making the space look less inviting.
Tip: Use the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush in Photoshop to remove unwanted flash shadows or soften them to create a more balanced, natural look.
To learn how to combat flash shadows, you can check out our short video tutorial on how to remove flash shadows in Photoshop:
9. Noise Reduction
Noise, or grain, is often introduced when shooting in low-light conditions. While it can be hard to avoid, it’s important to reduce noise to maintain the photo’s clarity and sharpness.
This technique is crucial for interior photos, especially in rooms with dim lighting.
Tip: Use Noise Reduction tools in Lightroom or Photoshop to minimize grain while maintaining fine details and sharpness in the image. Be careful not to overdo it, as excessive noise reduction can result in a soft, blurry image.
For more details, check out our video tutorial on how to reduce noise in Lightroom and Photoshop:
10. Image Sharpening
Sharpening enhances the fine details in an image, helping to make the textures and features of the room—such as furniture, fabrics, and architectural elements—stand out.
Proper sharpening can make the image look crisp and professional.
Tip: Use the Sharpening Tools in Lightroom or Photoshop to increase the contrast between edges, making the image appear more defined. Be mindful of over-sharpening, as this can introduce unwanted noise.
To learn more about this technique, check out our video tutorial on how to sharpen an image in Photoshop:
11. Object Removal
Sometimes, interior spaces contain distracting or unnecessary items—such as personal belongings, clutter, or minor imperfections—that can take away from the room’s appeal.
Removing these objects can create a more polished and inviting image.
Tip: Use the Content-Aware Fill or Clone Stamp tools in Photoshop to remove unwanted objects, replacing them with surrounding textures and colors.
To learn how to remove unwanted objects in your images, watch this tutorial video on how to remove cords in Photoshop:
And there you have 11 proven editing techniques to help make your interior real estate photos natural-looking and captivating!
Tips for Editing Interior Real Estate Photography
Before we leave the topic of interior editing, let’s check out some important aspects to consider when editing real estate photography:
- Keep It Realistic: While editing, ensure that your enhancements remain realistic and true to the space. Over-editing can make the room appear artificial and may lead to disappointed clients when they see the space in person
- Consistency Is Key: Ensure that all your photos from a particular shoot maintain a consistent look and feel. This includes maintaining similar brightness, contrast, and color tones across all images
- Highlight Key Features: Focus on highlighting the room’s most attractive features, whether it’s natural light, unique architecture, or high-end furnishings. A well-edited photo should showcase the property’s best qualities
If editing seems like a time-consuming task, outsourcing your editing to professionals like PhotoUp can help you maintain consistency and save time, all while ensuring your photos stand out in the competitive real estate market.
Have You Ever Thought To
Outsource Photo Editing?
Try it today with 10 free edits from three professional photo editors.
Outsourcing Your Interior Photo Editing to PhotoUp
PhotoUp offers professional real estate photo editing services that can help photographers save time and improve the quality of their work.
PhotoUp is a highly trusted brand that has been featured on some of the most well-respected real estate photography blogs/podcasts like the PFRE and Shooting Spaces.
We can help you with basic adjustments, as well as advanced techniques like:
- HDR editing
- Color cast removal
- Window masking
- Or object removal
Our team of experienced editors can enhance your images to meet industry standards.
By outsourcing your editing to PhotoUp, you can streamline your workflow, focus on capturing more listings, and ensure consistent, high-quality results every time.
Our pricing is affordable, starting at only $1.50 per image for on-demand editing. Dedicated editing can go as low as $0.50 per image depending on the editing batch.
Browse Top Dedicated
Real Estate Photo Editors
Ready-to-hire editors for real estate photo editing, and more.
How to Get Started
Our user-friendly platform lets you upload, review, and approve edits seamlessly, giving you more control over the final product while saving time and money.
Getting started is super easy – this is what to do:
Step 1. Sign up for a free PhotoUp account.
Step 2. Upload your photos to our easy-to-use software.
Step 3. Choose the level of editing that you need and provide instructions (optional).
Step 4. Wait for PhotoUp professional editors to edit and return the photos in less than 24 hours (48 hours for virtual staging).
Step 5. Download and start using your beautifully edited photos.
PhotoUp Real Estate Photo Editing Uploader Demo
To see how easy it is to get started with PhotoUp, check out our real estate photo editing uploader demo:
Wait! There’s more…
We Can Handle Your Marketing Too!
PhotoUp offers so much more than just editing. We are a complete one-stop-shop for real estate marketing services and also provide powerful tools such as:
- Virtual staging
- Virtual house tours
- Video editing
- Single property websites
- Real estate photographer websites
- Property flyers
- Floor plans
- House portraits
- And Virtual Assistants
You can find everything you need to enhance and market real estate photography in one user-friendly software.
Sign up for a free PhotoUp account and start outsourcing your interior real estate photo editing needs today. Just so you know, we handle exterior real estate photography too!
Best of all, when you sign up for an account, you’ll receive a bonus of 10 free credits you can use on any of our services.
We hope this blog post provided you with some proven and effective real estate editing techniques to help you enhance your interior photos. Before you go, you may also want to check out the following resources:
