Advancements in technology have permeated the real estate business with millions of agents joining their customers in using the Web to their advantage in buying and selling homes and commercial properties. The biggest reason real estate agents are looking to use the Internet is because between 70 – 90 percent of buyers and sellers say they expect to use their computer in the search and decision making process of purchasing real estate. Thousands of agents are enrolling in online services that link agents with buyers and sellers, as well as hosting their own Web sites to showcase property listings.

According to a recent study by the NPD Group, a marketing research group, property photos are considered extremely important to 92% of consumers. Therefore, enhancing your online listings with multiple photos and virtual tours is essential to building a Web site that will turn prospects into customers. When customers browse the Web looking for properties to purchase, they are drawn to listings with compelling, professionally-presented photos—images of homes or commercial properties displayed in their best light. Just as home sellers must prepare their home for sale, real estate agents can easily make a few quick changes to the images that reflect for-sale properties to ensure a good first impression.

Real estate agents need a powerful, affordable, easy to use solution to enhance and post images on the Web so they can concentrate their time matching property sellers with buyers.

Adobe Photoshop Elements provides flexible image-capture options that let agents work with photos taken with digital or traditional film cameras, offering versatile delivery features to prepare images for print, e-mail, or posting on the Web. Photoshop Elements software allows you to quickly retouch images such as straightening and cropping scanned photos, fixing overexposed areas with a few clicks of the mouse, or removing unwanted elements within an image to create the most appealing pictures of the properties you represent.

Following are some real world examples of how you can use Photoshop Elements to create a picture perfect house.

These examples will show you how to:

1. Create a photo gallery Web page containing multiple property photos

2. Fix a flawed photo by removing unwanted elements

3. Effectively display an expansive backyard, kitchen or any other area of a home by creating a panoramic view.

Create a photo gallery Web page

Let's say you wanted to design a Web page with photos of all of your listings. If you took the photos with a digital camera, you can import them directly into PhotoShop Elements. If you took them with a regular camera you can use a scanner to import your images. You can adjust your pictures, change the size to fit on the Web and even email, and create your Web page without having to learn HTML.

Here are the tools you will use:

• Quick Start screen—use Quick Start to create a new page and acquire the images from your scanner or digital camera. Online help and tutorials are also available from this screen.

• Save for Web—use Save for Web to precisely and interactively optimize graphics for posting on the Web.

• Web Photo Gallery—use Web Photo Gallery to choose a style for your Web page, enter and customize the title of your page, then specify the layout you want for the images. Customize the color of the text and background if you wish. Next, point to the images folder. Web Photo Gallery imports your images into the format you created and generates your Web page.

Fixing a flawed photo

Looking at the Web page you just created, you see that one of the photos—the front view of a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house—could use some sprucing up. It’s much too dark, and there’s an ugly trash can sitting on the lawn. Plus, the green of the grass in the yard isn’t as vibrant as you’d like. Cropping out both the street in front of the house and the distracting view of the neighbor’s house would also greatly improve the picture. What can you do about these problems? How can you fix these flaws so the house will look more appealing and attractive to potential clients?

Here are the tools you use to work some magic and get that perfect picture:

• Fill Flash tool—adjust the slider bar in the Fill Flash tool to lighten the darkness of the photo.

• Clone tool—use the Clone tool to grab a sample of the grass and use the sample to paint over the trash can and remove it from the photo.
• Hue-Saturation—select the lawn and use the Hue and Saturation tools to make the color of the grass greener.
• Crop tool—use the Crop tool to trim the photo so only the areas you desire to show are displayed.
• QuickFix Recipe—leads you through the steps for doing a quick rehab on the photo. Straighten the image, improve the overall contrast and mixture of color, and sharpen the edges.

Photoshop Elements also provides Hints and Recipe Palettes that help you learn these and other tools quickly. The Hints Palette provides context-sensitive illustrations and tips that explain how to use Photoshop Elements tools. The Recipes Palette interactively teaches you how to perform a variety of multi-step tasks, yet still gives you full control throughout each task. There’s even a History Palette that lets you undo what you've just created in case you change your mind.

Create a panoramic view

You have a few photos of a property that has a backyard or kitchen to die for. You want to display the area, but individual photos don’t capture the panoramic sweep of the view. The Photomerge feature in Photoshop Elements will let you stitch these photos together into one seamless, sweeping view.

• Photomerge technology automatically resizes, skews, and blends portions of multiple images, even determining automatically how to arrange the images horizontally and vertically. Just gather the photos into one folder and arrange them in the Photomerge work area, overlapping them by about 30%. Adjust the perspective and align the images. Preview the composition and adjust the lighting. Then automatically generate the panorama as a new file.
• You can crop the photo and use any filter, painting tool, or editing tool to fine-tune this image just like any of your other photos.

Published: November 30, 2001

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