Table of Contents

Are you a real estate photographer and looking for the best photo editing program to create captivating photos?

Then, this post is for you!

As a real estate photographer, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are the industry standard but there are more great options to choose from.

In this post, we’ll share our picks of the 5+ best photo editing programs for real estate photographers to make final touch-ups and create stunning images. 

Before we dive in, let’s begin by discussing why photo editing is important for real estate photography.

Why Is Photo Editing Important?

Photo editing is vital when looking to create professional real estate photography that will capture buyers’ attention and help sell homes quickly and for top dollar.

In post-processing, you can, for example, edit your photos to:

  • Balance hues
  • Improve saturation
  • Create special effects
  • Remove blemishes
  • Fix exposures
  • Improve detail
  • And more.

It allows you to do the final touches that will make the images pop.

Needless to say, image quality matters a great deal in real estate marketing. In fact, 61.3% of brokers believe high-quality photography is crucial for selling homes. And 83% of buyers said pictures were very important in helping them choose which homes they will visit.

If you can ensure top-quality real estate photography, your clients will likely come back for more and also spread the word about your business to other agents and Realtors.

Luckily, there are many photo editing programs to help you create high-quality photos.

But which one should you choose? Let’s have a look at some of the best and most user-friendly options.

High-Quality & Consistent

Real Estate Photo Editing

Hire a dedicated editor with performance metrics from $7/hour.

Best Photo Editing Programs (Our Top 5+ Picks)

Listing the 5+ photo editing programs for real estate photographers, we hope to make your decision on what program to choose a bit easier.

1. Adobe Lightroom

Best photo editing program: Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is a photo editing and management system developed by Adobe Inc. as part of the Creative Cloud subscription family.

For one, Lightroom is a powerful program in terms of bringing more detail out of areas that are in shadows. It’s also excellent at color correction.

The program was designed to be an efficient way to manage, edit, organize, and import photos. It offers a wide range of functionality designed to improve the quality of your images. 

Here are some of Lightroom’s best features:

  • Powerful RAW file editor
  • Easy crop functionality
  • Being able to create presets to save time
  • Batch process images using the Quick Develop panel
  • Intuitive user interface
  • Creative adjustment tools
  • Non-destructive editing that protects your originals
  • Easily transfer adjustment settings from one image to another

Another plus is the fact that Lightroom is part of the larger Creative Cloud Suite from Adobe, so it’ll sync with all other CC apps.

This means that users can access their photo library from anywhere at any time. It also allows them to create collections of images based on keyword tags or dates.

Pricing: Adobe Lightroom costs $9.99 per month or $119.88 per year. 

2. Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is another photo editing program in the Adobe family, which is perfect for intermediate to professional photographers.

With Photoshop, you can easily adjust the color, tonality, and exposure of an image. 

It contains all the tools you’ll need to edit photos to the highest quality and is the world industry standard in photo editing software. 

The program is specifically designed to enable users to create and edit raster images in multiple layers. Plus, it’s also possible to apply several color models like CMYK, RGB, and Duotoneto to the layers.

Some of Photoshop’s popular features are:

  • Advanced layer management
  • Professional color grading
  • Editing of different types of image formats
  • Support for video clips and graphics
  • Easy cropping and slice tool
  • Retouching tools
  • Photoshop 3D editing
  • Smart objects and vector mask

Pricing: Adobe Photoshop uses an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription-based model. So users can subscribe to 3 different pricing plans: 

  • Photography Plan (1TB) – $9.99/month
  • Photoshop Plan – US$20.99/month
  • Or, All Apps Plan – US$52.99/month.

3. Corel Paintshop Pro

Corel PaintShop Pro

Corel PaintShop Pro is a favorite program of both experts and beginners because of its easy-to-use photo editing tools and features. 

The program’s main features are:

  • Ability to correct perspectives
  • Change color gradients
  • Adjust white balance
  • One-step photo fix
  • HDR merging
  • AI upsampling
  • AI style transfer
  • And more.

In addition, Corel Paintshop Pro utilizes GPS data for geo-tagging and can also help you detect faces in a collection of photos.

Pricing: PaintShop Pro 2023 is available directly from Corel or via retail for $79.99 or $59.99 as an upgrade from any previous version.

4. Snapseed HDR

Snapseed HDR

Snapseed HDR is a free photo editing app for iOS and Android phones. This user-friendly app can help you create photos that’ll look like they were taken with a wide-angle real estate photography lens.

Additionally, one of its strongest features is the HDR Scape filter, which can help users to transform a single photo into a masterpiece. 

Users can take multiple exposures of the same scene and then easily merge them together to create one final image, resulting in more detail. 

Snapseed HDR comes with editing tools such as:

  • Tune Image
  • Details
  • Crop
  • Rotate
  • Perspective
  • White Balance
  • Brush
  • Selective
  • Healing
  • And more.

Pricing: This is a free photo editing app.

5. Serif PhotoPlus

Serif PhotoPlus

Even though Serif PhotoPlus comes with a user-friendly interface, it has all the tools and capabilities to do more creative and advanced edits. 

For example, it has a smart-selection feature to auto-select interesting image sections and being able to customize them to look like watercolor and oil paints.

Here are some of Serif PhotoPlus’s other features:

  • Adjust color balance and exposure
  • Crop photos
  • Remove creases and other defects 
  • Apply basic filters
  • Automatic sizing for social media
  • Remove red-eye from photos
  • Collage effects
  • Blank canvas design
  • Restore scanned photos
  • And more.

Pricing: Serif PhotoPlus can be used on both Windows and Mac and can be purchased as a subscription for either $9.99/month or $59.99/year.

6. Canva

Canva

With a simple interface, Canva is one of the best free graphic design programs for beginners on the market. In just a few minutes, users can produce designs of the highest caliber.

Anyone who wants to create stunning visuals for social media, blogs, videos, and websites would enjoy this application. 

Canva has a library of over 1 million images that users can manipulate and recreate as their own. With easy drag-and-drop features, users can add graphics, and text boxes, and change the colors and fonts of their designs.

 Here are some of the features included in Canva:

  • Image cropping and straightening
  • Design grids and photo frames
  • Add texture
  • Image transparency tool
  • Over 8,000 templates
  • Photo blur and vignette
  • Photo enhancer
  • Speech bubble maker
  • Stickers and badges

Pricing: Canva has a free and a premium version. The premium version costs either $12.99/month or $119.99/year (for up to 5 users).

Have You Ever Thought To

Outsource Photo Editing?

Try it today with 10 free edits from three professional photo editors.

Use PhotoUp’s Professional PhotoUp Editing Service 

If you wish to save time and ensure top-notch quality real estate photography, PhotoUp’s expert editing team is ready and eager to help.

With more than 10 years in the business and several hundred skilled photo editors around the world, you can’t beat PhotoUp’s quality, service, and pricing. 

Additionally, PhotoUp’s expert team can handle any photo editing job — big or small, complex, or simple. 

Our skilled photo editors can help with the following issues:

  • Improper exposure levels
  • Harsh shadows, lack of light, etc. 
  • Blurred images that were taken without a tripod  
  • Images that need cropping or other effects
  • Lawn greening and sky replacements
  • Twilight editing
  • Clutter and object removal
  • Line and angle corrections
  • And much more!

On top of that, PhotoUp also offers additional real estate marketing services such as:

And fortunately, PhotoUp’s pricing is affordable, starting at the low cost of $1.50 per image. 

All you need to do is sign up for a free PhotoUp account, place your first order and your photographs will be delivered back to you in less than 24 hours.

PhotoUp Real Estate Photo Editing Uploader Demo

To see how easy it is to use our software, you can check out our real estate photo editing uploader demo: 

As simple as that!

Get started with PhotoUp today and we’ll help you create captivating real estate photography in no time. Did we mention that you get 10 free edits when you sign up?!

We hope this post helped you discover the best photo editing program for your individual editing needs. Before you go, you may also want to check out the following resources:

Stina Pettersson

Professional Blogger

Stina is an entrepreneur, digital marketer, and professional blogger who's passionate about real estate photo editing, being outdoors with her pup, and sweaty gym sessions. She loves the written word and has been writing for publications like Forbes and Thrive Global. Originally from Sweden, she's called South Florida her home since 2013.

Connect with Stina