There’s a lot you can do to change the objects in a real estate image – provided you know what you are doing.

To give you a brief background, real estate marketing images have never been more important.

As the industry embraces the tools of online marketing, your images take center stage and need to convey everything there is to know about a listing.

You can no longer rely on the feel of a place to convince buyers. All they have to work with is your image – so it needs to be perfect.

In this post, we’ll show you how to remove an object in Adobe Photoshop to help improve your real estate photography using 9 simple steps.

But first, let’s take a look at why removing unwanted objects are necessary in the first place.

Why Should You Remove Unwanted Objects in Your Real Estate Photography?

Fortunately, the software tools to radically alter the appearance of a room are there for everyone to use – if you know what to do.

In fact, removing an object in an image is one of the more challenging tasks you’ll do in Photoshop.

And if you aren’t familiar with the software, it can end up looking clunky and fake.

But if you are a skilled operator, then it’s almost magical how you can take unwanted distractions out of any photograph by working with areas that surround the unwanted object to cover it up.

When would you want to remove an object? Let’s look at a few examples:

• There’s an ugly spot of peeling paint in the kitchen
• The photo of the bedroom has clothes strewn all over the carpet
• There’s an unwanted car in the driveway
• You failed to notice a person walking through the exterior just as you took the shot

These are all situations when removing an object using Photoshop can improve your real estate photography.

Alright, let’s get into the nitty-gritty!

Removing an Object in Adobe Photoshop

To get started, you can either watch the video tutorial on how to remove a car from a driveway. Or you can continue reading the text below.

Step 1. Start by right-clicking on the image you are working on, then select Edit in Adobe Photoshop.

Step 2. Next, use the Lasso tool to select the area you want to replicate and to expand over your unwanted object.

Step 3. After marking the object using the Lasso tool, you select the Clone Stamp tool.

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Step 4. Now, carefully brush over the area you want to remove using color and texture from the background so that they blend in and look the same.

Step 5. Don’t make it too clean though – add a little ‘noise’ to the image by going to Filter > Noise > Add Noise.

Step 6. Then, add 0.5 – 1% noise for a natural look.

Step 7. To cover over a larger area, open a new layer and use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to select it.

Step 8. Then, copy and drag that area, change the opacity to between 30%-50%, and cover over the object you want to remove.

Step 9. Lastly, make sure there is no obvious repetitive cloning visible.

That’s it!

Wrapping Up

With a bit of time and lots of practice, you can get really good at removing objects from real estate photos in Photoshop.

But if there are ways that you can better spend your time and energy, then you should consider outsourcing this kind of work to the trained professionals at a real estate photo editing company, like PhotoUp.

Our teams of skilled photo editors and virtual staging artists are highly skilled and experienced and waiting to take photo editing off your hands. 

All you need to do is upload your images and instruct the team on what you’d like – they’ll do the rest.

PhotoUp delivers hi-resolution, high-quality images, edited in your style within hours. 

To see what PhotoUp can do for your real estate marketing images, sign up for a free account today. 

We hope this post helped you understand how to remove unwanted objects in Adobe Photoshop to improve your real estate photography.

If you found this post useful, you may also want to check out the following resources:

Real estate marketing has shifted online and virtual staging is leading the way.

It’s no secret that real estate marketing in 2022 has moved almost completely digital. Not only is it a consequence of the changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s simply a reflection of how most people now consume media.

When it comes to real estate marketing, there is nothing more important than the quality of your digital marketing content.

And in 2022, virtual staging is leading the way…

What Is Virtual Staging?

Virtual staging allows real estate agents to present any listing in its best possible light.

Using digital tools and virtual furniture, empty rooms can be transformed into beautifully decorated spaces in just a few hours.

It’s all done in the interest of providing buyers an aspirational vision of a property that they can imagine themselves living in.

Staging has been around for years. But what used to take days of set up and exorbitant costs, can now be done by experienced artists in a matter of hours and for as low as $3 per image.

Benefits of Virtual Staging

There are a number of benefits to virtual staging as opposed to physical staging:

1. Cost

First of all, it’s way more affordable than staging a home the “old school” way.

Think of the costs involved in renting furniture, transporting it, setting it up for a showing, inviting interested buyers, printing brochures, insuring everything, and then packing it all up again.

Chances are, that will easily run into hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

But with virtual staging, you only need to upload a clean image, make a few selections from a furniture catalog and give the photo editors a few hours to get it all done.

In addition, prices depend on the size of the room you’re staging. But it’s likely you’ll pay somewhere between $25 and $50 per image.

Conclusion: You’ll save money with virtual staging vs physical staging.

2. Quick Turnaround Time

Whereas home staging would take days to organize, setup and then dismantle; its virtual counterpart is effortless and can be completed within 24 hours.

The most difficult part will be making sure you choose a photo to virtually stage.

For more information, here are a few tips on how best to shoot for virtual staging.

After you have chosen a clean image, there are 3 simple steps:

• Create an account and upload the photo.
• Select from our 5 professionally curated AI design styles.
• In just 1 to 2 minutes, the AI will generate 3 different versions of each room for you to review and download immediately!

Conclusion: You’ll save lots of time.

3. Flexibility

With virtual staging, you can choose from a variety of different looks for a room.

From American style to Scandinavian, Farmhouse to Modern, it all depends on the audience in your market and the buyers you’re trying to attract.

You can customize your real estate marketing with just a few clicks of a button.

Take a look at some of the Room Styles that PhotoUp offers.

Conclusion: You’ll be able to customize a room in seconds.

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4. Ease of Use

One of the best aspects is how easy it is to order.

Once you’ve signed up with PhotoUp, you are a few clicks away from completely changing the look and feel of a property.

Uploading, selecting furniture, offering suggestions, and receiving the finished product are handled intuitively by companies like PhotoUp.

Conclusion: Virtual staging is as easy as one, two, three (upload, select furniture, share)!

Cons of Virtual Staging

In the interests of fairness, we should mention the downsides of virtually staging a home too.

For example, there is something really special about visiting a property, running your hand along the fittings and looking out the window.

Digital staging cannot replace the real life experience.

But it does mean that your real estate marketing efforts can extend beyond your hometown. And interested buyers from all across the state or even the whole country can see what a home will look like, and if it suits their tastes.

The Post-Covid Business Landscape

Since the early 2010’s, virtual staging has been growing in popularity simply on its own merits. But when the pandemic struck in late 2019, it went into overdrive.

It quickly became the perfect solution for people who were not able to physically visit the home, but wanted to get a feel for what the home would look like in a real life setting.

Now that the pandemic is (hopefully) coming to an end, it’s becoming clear that the industry has fallen in love with what virtual staging can offer. How easy and affordable it is, and how essential it has become in modern real estate marketing.

Turns out, there’s no going back from how things were before when it can be done virtually.

To find out more about how PhotoUp can help you virtually stage your real estate listings, sign up for a free trial account today!

We hope you enjoyed reading this post about the next big thing in real estate marketing. Make sure to also check out the following resources:

• Benefits of Professional Real Estate Photo Editing
• Use These Easy Photo Editing Programs for Beginners
• The Basics of Real Estate Photo Editing
• How Much Does Real Estate Photo Editing Cost?
• Real Estate Photo Editing Techniques to Improve Property Images

Written by Jeremy Daniel: Jeremy Daniel is a freelance real estate photographer and blogger with a special interest in using web tools that can benefit the creative process

As a real estate photographer, I have been looking at ways to extend the services I offer to my clients. One of the ways I want to do that is via virtual staging. That means using software tools to stage a room with virtual furniture and decor. It’s a trend that has gained popularity here in the US since COVID-19 hit in 2020.

I selected one image and two of the most well-known services to test against each other: PhotoUp and BoxBrownie.

The aspects I decided to focus on were:

• Overall quality
• Price
• virtual furniture catalog
• Turnaround time
• Ordering system

Here is the image that I was going to use as a basis for the test:

Uploading

The act of getting your image up onto the various platforms is easy to achieve. They each offer simple drag-and-drop interfaces. On the same page, the virtual staging services offer you a number of options to choose from, for example, what kind of room it is, what kind of furniture you like, and whether you want to remove items already in the picture. (For BoxBrownie, there is an extra cost for removing items. They also provided an option to add text to the image, which was interesting.)

AI Virtual Staging Uploader Tutorial from PhotoUp on Youtube.

BoxBrownie virtual staging uploader

Catalogues

All three services offer sophisticated, contemporary furniture items that are beautifully rendered and would enhance any room. While PhotoUp and Virtual Staging Solutions (VSS) use beautiful catalog-style design sets to help you make a choice, BoxBrownie goes for a more ‘Instagram-filter’ style approach to help you make a selection.

• PhotoUp virtual staging catalog
• VSS catalog
• BoxBrownie styling options

Each of the services has more than enough great items for you to choose from. I selected a Farmhouse style look for the empty room for each of the services.

Pricing

There was slight divergence between the services here. PhotoUp works with credits while BoxBrownie and VirtualStagingSolutions offered a US$ fee for their services. With PhotoUp the cost of the job was 3 credits (US $3), while BoxBrownie’s fee was $32 for standard virtual staging with extra costs for any other additions or subtractions, which I didn’t use.

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Delivery and Turnaround Time

Just five hours after I had uploaded my test image, the results started coming in. The first response was from BoxBrownie and PhotoUp was close behind.

Both companies notified me via email that the image was ready and offered a link to click within the email, that opens onto a page that shows your virtual image next to the original.

Differences become apparent in the services once you are looking at your edits. For example, BoxBrownie only lets you download the image before you can look closely and interact with it. On PhotoUP, it’s far easier to click and enlarge, flip easily between the examples and leave a note for your virtual staging editor.

BoxBrownie Virtual Staging

Here’s my virtual staging result from BoxBrownie:

I was fairly happy with the virtual staging result. The furniture seemed well-proportioned and tasteful, although I thought perhaps the rug should contrast more with the floor. But my biggest problem was that the furniture in the image felt unbalanced. I know if I was in the room I would definitely be pushing that table to the right, so I asked them to realign in a follow-up message and they obliged, free of charge.

Revision 1. I thought this looked so much better

The completed photo appears on a page with useful metadata about the job number, when it was done, and how much you paid. There’s also a big red button that lets you download a ZIP file of the job.

PhotoUp Virtual Staging

Here’s the virtual staging image I received from PhotoUp:

What most impressed me about the PhotoUp final image was the attention to detail that they provided. For example, the hint of a pot plant in the foreground gives the impression that you are looking past a real plant into a room. A scene on the television screen brings it to life, as opposed to BoxBrownie’s black screen.

The drapes frame the windows in the room. The succulents on the shelves, and the flowers on the coffee table are beautiful extra details that help make the image feel warm and inviting. Overall, I was very pleased with the initial result and did not need to send back any revision requests.

BoxBrownie or PhotoUp?

Communication was great with both companies and they were responsive to my suggestions. I especially liked the personalized email from PhotoUp’s support team who explained a few issues they were having, based on the furniture selected. It was great to be able to give feedback in real-time as my image was being staged.

Because of the quality of the final image along with the price and turnaround time, PhotoUp stood out to me as the clear favorite when it comes to virtual staging.

At the end of the day, either company is a great choice and virtual staging is a great tool to have in your toolbox. Virtual staging is a great way to extend the services you can offer to realtors as a real estate photographer. Now, try out these services for yourself and see what works for you. Good luck!

Having access to technology that lets you take a photograph of an empty room, and furnish it in whatever style you want, is an incredible advantage for real estate photographers. But not all photographers and interior designers.

You are adding tremendous value to the photographs that you submit by getting them virtually staged. But that advantage is not worth much if you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to picking out furniture to match a room or the overall style of the home. So, some people may end up staging a room that isn’t appealing and doesn’t showcase the best features of the room.

This can lead to a lot of back and forth with the agent or home seller, countless revisions, and potentially lost business down the road. So, it’s worth taking the time to understand some basic principles of interior design that you can use when you start offering virtual staging to your clients.

Let’s first remind ourselves exactly what virtual staging is.

What Is Virtual Staging?

Virtual staging is the art of using computer software to digitally alter a photograph of an empty room so that it appears fully furnished. In today’s digital-first economic climate, realtors are doing the vast majority of their marketing online to clients who don’t have time or the ability to visit homes in person. They want to see a realistic vision of what the room will look like furnished, and as photographers, we can do that for our realtor clients.

You can choose between downloading software onto your phone or PC which lets you make the creative choices and manipulate the furniture into a room, or you can work with a trusted service provider who will take the slog work out of virtual staging and work with you to create the perfectly staged room. The choice is yours.

Virtual home staging is a cost-effective, quick, and efficient way of marketing properties in the digital age and it’s transforming the way that the industry operates.

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Virtual Staging Ideas and Examples

• Get the Basics Right – That means making sure the room you’re photographing is empty, clean, and well-lit. A really good photograph gives the virtual staging artists so much more to work with, which means they’re not spending most of their time and energy fixing the original image.

• Strike a Balance Between Clean and Inviting – Most modern design features a very minimal aesthetic that showcases how much space there is. But bear in mind that buyers have furniture and a lifetime of possessions and they need help visualizing where they will put all their things. Give them examples that reflect the reality of our working lives, not some tech billionaire fantasy of zen living.

• Use a Neutral Background – Unless you’re very experienced or you’re going for a very specific look, you should set a neutral color foundation to set an emotional tone. Then, use pops of color to highlight areas and accessorize the room. Try to set a calm and inviting tone to each room that you stage.

Then onto that neutral palette, you can use splashes of color to excite and enthuse prospective buyers. On the cushions, rugs, flowers, and paintings – that’s where you can use color and quirkiness to give a room more personality.

• Decide on a Focal Point and Draw Attention to It – Every room should have a single area or piece of furniture that catches the eye when you walk in. Decide what that is and build around it. From a fireplace to a great window or a beautiful couch….whatever it is, you get to decide who is the star of the show in each room.

• Prioritize Natural Lighting – People love to know how the light moves inside a room. Try to keep as much natural lighting as you can by not covering up the windows or digitally manipulating the light.

That said, it helps to use a professional virtual staging company that will help you light, shade, and edit the furniture just so, so that the image looks as realistic as possible. It can be nearly impossible to tell that a good virtually staged image is even virtually staged at all!

Conclusion

The options are endless when it comes to virtual staging, and the best artists can turn an ordinary room into something that looks like it belongs in a glossy, interior design magazine. You can enhance your results by spending some time thinking about interior design and understanding its principles. This will make collaboration with your virtual staging company much smoother and help you produce a greater volume of excellent work.

To get started with virtual staging, sign up today for PhotoUp’s easy-to-use virtual staging service. Work with creative visual staging artists who will understand your vision and turn your photographs into glossy magazine-ready showrooms.

Browse the latest virtual staging library right here and get a sense of our style.

Virtual staging is taking the real estate industry by storm. With social distancing rules still in effect in most areas, more and more agents are increasing the amount of digital marketing for their new listings. Virtual staging specifically offers realtors the chance to take an empty room and create a compelling vision of a fully furnished room that is attractive for potential buyers, without the cost, time and headaches of a physical home staging.

By using the right virtual staging software solutions and a strong aesthetic vision for the listing, realtors are able to present buyers with beautiful images that showcase the best features of a home and lets the buyer imagine what it would be like to live in the property.

All at a fraction of the cost that it used to cost a few short years ago.

What is Virtual Staging?

Virtual staging is the use of sophisticated 3D modelling software to turn photos of plain vacant homes into enticing, attractive photos of lived-in homes that can be used for marketing purposes.

Why are more and more agents opting for virtual staging instead of real staging? Not only for the cost but also for the flexibility that it offers. When you do real physical home staging you are tied into one look and you have one shot to get it right.

In the virtual world, you can create different looks for different prospects and mix and match until you get it right. Virtual staging providers like PhotoUp have teams of experienced CAD artists and photo editors who can create the perfect look for a room, quickly and easily.

All you need to do is provide the basic photo for them to work on, upload it to PhotoUp and wait for the final product to be sent back to you, typically within 24-48 hours.

It saves you time, money and gives you exactly the tools you need to market your properties online.

The affordability of virtual staging is one of its most attractive features.

Users are charged per room that they want staged. (So for example, if a realtor is selling a property and wants to showcase the living room, bedroom and bathroom in order to make the sale, then they would pay for virtual staging of three rooms.)

Companies like PhotoUp have deliberately kept the pricing simple: Using a credit system, they charge members 20 credits per image which typically comes out to $20 per image.

For just $20, the realtor can choose one furniture set from PhotoUp’s online virtual furniture catalog. Categories of furniture include:

Living Rooms
Dining Rooms
Bedrooms
Office
Gym Equipment
Game Rooms
Patio & Rooftops
Kitchen Sets
Bathrooms

Find out more about how Virtual Staging with PhotoUp works right here.

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Is Virtual Staging Worth It?

There’s simply no question that virtual staging is worth it for realtors. It’s a fraction of the cost of physical home staging, and you can have a marketing image ready and uploaded onto the MLS within 24 hours. Compare that to physical staging that normally takes between a week and two weeks to set up, photography, and get the listing online.

With so much marketing taking place digitally these days, it’s easier than ever to market your listings online, and most prospective buyers prefer online viewing first as opposed to a real location visit.

The extensive online virtual furniture catalog and the team of skilled designers employed by PhotoUp allows you to have rooms customized exactly as you want them with minimal cost or effort.

Virtual staging slashes your costs, improves your marketing content and helps realtors get listings up as quickly as possible. The images you receive from your virtual staging provider are high-resolution, optimized for the web and ready for use on your MLS and favorite real estate marketing platforms.

Ready To Learn More? Check out these 12 important terms you should understand about virtual staging.

Spend Less and Sell Faster

The stats are compelling. A survey done by HomeStagingResources.com found that 85% of staged homes sold for between 6-25% more than unstaged homes in the same market. That’s a significant advantage to have, and in this age of social distancing and digital marketing, virtual staging makes sense from both a cost and an effectiveness standpoint.

To get started with PhotoUp’s virtual staging and photo editing services, sign up here, visit the virtual furniture catalog and send us your images today!

Virtual staging using a real estate photo editing company or online software has exploded in popularity around the world. Realtors are using the full power of the digital economy to feature photos of their properties online in order to drive more traffic and interest to their listings. They can then use the power of virtual staging to digitally add furniture to space in order to provide more value for both buyers and sellers. At the end of the day, this entire digital marketing process helps to sell properties faster and more efficiently than ever before.

The results that you get when you work with virtual staging companies are a far more effective use of your resources than attempting to physically stage a home for an open house. By working with such a company, you’ll get a fully furnished hi-resolution image of a room within 24-48 hours that you can use in multiple marketing channels (online listing, listing flyer, single property website, etc.) to help draw attention to your listing. Not to mention, the cost of staging virtually can start as low as $20 per image.

So, if that sounds like something that will be valuable to your real estate photography business, then read on as we discuss some of the most important terms you need to know to become efficient and effective at virtual staging.

Home Staging vs Virtual Staging

Before you begin, make sure you know the difference.

Home staging involves furnishing a physical space with real furniture that clients are going to come and visit during a showing. You will probably work with a home staging professional who will charge you to rent all their furniture and accessories, get them to the location, and set them up, then take them away afterward.

Virtual staging means working with the same property but instead of staging with physical pieces of furniture, you take images of the empty home and then use digital furniture to show potential buyers how the property will look when it is fully furnished.

What you need to do is:

1. Take professional photos of the property. We suggest using a professional real estate photography company.
2. Search online and choose the best virtual staging company to work with.
3. Select virtual furniture from an online catalog of virtual furniture sets and individual pieces.
4. Upload your images and furniture selections to the virtual staging company.
5. Receive your virtually staged images within 24-48 hours!

It stands to reason that virtual staging is much faster, more affordable, and more effective in the digital-first environment that we are operating in today.

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12 Virtual Staging Terms You Need to Know

• Virtual Home Staging – Working with a digital artist and/or real estate photo editing team to create a fully furnished image using digital furniture and digital decor.
• Virtual Furniture – Digital renderings of furniture and accessories you can choose from when virtually staging a room.
• Virtual Staging Online Catalog – An online repository of virtual furniture and individual furniture pieces that real estate photographers and realtors can select from when staging a room or property. Click this link for an example of a virtual staging online catalog.
• Uploading – As the real estate photographer, it’s up to you to work with a real estate photo editing company, a virtual staging company, or preferably both. Uploading refers to the process of sending the unprocessed images over to your real estate photo editing company and/or virtual staging company.
• Furniture Set – Matching pieces of furniture that are used to create a certain look or style within a set of virtual staging images, e.g Modern, Scandanavian, or Beach.
• Turnaround Time – How long it takes your virtual staging company to complete a final virtual staging image.
• Revisions – The virtual staging company takes your requests or recommendations and revises the virtual staging image according to your feedback. Some virtual staging companies charge for this service. Others, like PhotoUp, do not charge for revisions as long as you let us know about the revisions before you give your final approval.
• Virtual Staging Artist – Someone who is experienced in virtually staging rooms with the use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and other photoediting software like Photoshop and Lightroom.
• CAD (Computer-Aided Design) – The act of using computers to create or modify an online design.
• Virtual Staging App – A mobile application you can download onto your device that lets you do virtually stage a room yourself.
• Virtual Staging Companies – Businesses that provide virtual staging services to real estate photographers and realtors looking to virtually stage their properties.
• Rendering – The time it takes to actually produce the finished image once all the creative choices have been made and the software begins to put it all together.

Should You Use Virtual Staging?

Regardless if you’re a realtor or real estate photographer, the evidence seems to be overwhelming that you should be using virtual staging as part of your real estate marketing strategy.

It’s fast, it gives you a huge reach into the online market of prospective buyers, and it’s so affordable that you can afford to get multiple images and multiple looks for the same price as a few days of home staging.

Try virtual staging today and start to build a beautiful web portfolio of your properties with PhotoUp.

Virtual staging is a fast, easy, and affordable way of staging a home so the property would be appealing to would-be buyers. Virtual staging also has many other benefits for real estate photographers.

The technique involves adding virtually designed furniture, appliances, and accents in a high-quality image of vacant interior space. As a real estate photographer, adding virtual staging to your menu of services can help make you a one-stop-shop for all your clients’ real estate marketing needs.

Virtual staging is in the same wheelhouse of computer-aided design (CAD). And when it comes to this type of graphic design, there’s a natural tendency to go overboard, whether it’s the client’s instruction or the designer’s intuition.

Here are 5 basic but essential virtual staging rules that you and your virtual stager need to be aware of.

1. Match the style of furnishings with the theme of the room

One of the rules of sensible interior design is to use pieces that go well together with the room. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, the same holds true for virtual staging.

As a rule of thumb, furniture, decor, appliances, and accent pieces should match the physical space (aka, the home itself). For example, classic furniture goes well with a more contemporary-style home. But, classic furniture would certainly look out of place in a modern house with big floor to ceiling windows, stainless steel appliances, and an open floor plan.

Unsure of what style of virtual furniture to add to a vacant room? Check out magazines, websites, and photos that feature home decorating ideas and sensible interior design. Examples would be Houzz, Pinterest, or simply search for interior design photos on Instagram.
Looking for magazines to help inspire you? Check out Architecture’s Digest, Home and Garden, Ideal Home, and more.

PhotoUp also offers an online catalog where you can choose thousands of pieces of furniture that you can add to your images.

2. Make sure the design is sensible and reflects reality.

Now we all know that virtual home staging is the process of blending elements of CAD into an image in order to make the image look realistic. However, taking the perfect real estate photo is the first step to producing a great virtual staging image.

A great virtual staging image will also take into effect the lighting and shadows once the furniture has been placed. Let’s say you took an interior shot of a master bedroom that features a large window facing East. In the image, sunlight streams through the window during the mid-morning sun. When adding furniture under the sunbeam, you would expect it to look brighter and there would normally be shadows cast along the floor and walls where the new furniture blocks the sunlight.

If the floor is made of polished marble, then there should be a light reflection of the furniture seen on the floor. The same goes for mirrors. If the furniture is truly part of the room, you would expect to see its reflection in the mirror, right?

All these effects should be seen in a great virtually staged image. Effects like these make your photos more convincing and will help you sell more virtual staging services to your clients. The best virtual staging companies out there will be aware of these effects and make sure they are included in every image.

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3. Limit the number of furnishings or decorations.

Have you ever furnished or decorated a newly renovated room in your home? In your excitement to liven up the place, it’s common to add furniture, appliances, or accents to the room. In the end, the room may seem cluttered and busy. Not exactly what you were going for, right?

The same goes for virtual staging. It is easy to go overboard due to a number of factors—excitement, that nagging thought that “it is not enough”, or the desire to put a plant on every shelf and a picture on every wall.
By doing this, you can make the final image look too overwhelming and flashy.

Resist the temptation to have the stager put virtual furnishings in every square inch of space. Remember that you are trying to give the potential property buyer an idea of what their new home could look like.
The virtual furniture in the photo may not be to his/her liking, but they’ll enjoy having something to reference when deciding what furniture they want to put into each room when they move in.

So, take our advice and keep it simple when virtually staging a room. Your clients and potential home buyers will appreciate it.

4. Know your clients

When virtually staging an image, it’s important to know what your client wants when it comes to virtual furniture. What style of furniture do they like? Are they particular about the furniture they want in each room? Do you need to send them a virtual furniture catalog and let them pick our furniture in advance OR do they let you have full control as to what looks best?
At the end of the day, your job is to make your clients happy. Knowing their style and preferences in advance will help you provide them with a virtual staging image that they’re sure to love.

5. Minimize adding your personal touches

Sure, you want to have a “signature” touch for personal branding. But often, this can become a hindrance instead of helpful. Remember, you are virtually staging a photo to sell a property, not to impress your clients with your love of excessive foliage or affinity for zebra print rugs.

Resist the urge of putting something personal in these photos and focus more on making your clients love the images you give them.

By simply being aware of the rules mentioned above, you’ll be on the right track to selling more virtual staging images and providing even more value to your best clients.

The benefits of virtual staging for real estate agents is undeniable. To be able to present a room that is beautifully furnished, well-lit, and decorated to match the tastes of the buyer is a very persuasive sales tool. Not only are buyers more willing to commit to a visit when they see a furnished room, but according to an article from design blog DesignBlendz shows buyers are willing to pay higher prices once they get a sense of how the room will look when they move in. that they are also willing to pay more for a property that they can quickly move into.

Virtual staging removes the headache of having to stage the home yourself which involves renting furniture and decor, transporting it to the house, setting everything up, taking photographs, having an open house, and paying a weekly fee in order to keep the property furnished until it sells. Or, hire a home staging company to do this for you and it might end up costing twice as much… As you can imagine, the costs can add up quickly.

Using virtual staging software to achieve the same effect at a fraction of the cost makes good business sense. But you do have an important choice to make: Whether to do it yourself using virtual staging software (or virtual staging app) or whether to work with one of the many reputable virtual staging companies out there.

Let’s take a look at some pros and cons of each approach.

The Benefits of Virtual Staging Companies

Compare that scenario with what you experience when working with a virtual staging company. You have access to a large library of 3D virtual furniture, CAD software experts, and photo retouching professionals. You get to choose the kind of look & feel for the space, collaborate with the team around specific pieces that you want to add and take the time to make something that looks realistic and livable.

PhotoUp virtual staging offers free quality checks before delivery and free revisions to the work if you’re not happy with the result. We also guarantee a turnaround time of 24-48 hours for every virtually staged image. Our goal is not just to provide realistic virtual staging but to also make it look as realistic and aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Our professional interior designers keep up to date with the latest trends in home decor and produce beautiful, crated pieces for our Virtual Staging catalog. Our in-house virtual staging team designs and models all our own 3D furniture models, ensuring you have unique, modern, and high-quality furniture placed in your vacant home photos.

Take a look at some examples of the beautiful work that our team has produced over the years.

The downside of working with a professional team is that it is not an instant process. If you’ve got only 30 minutes to get your virtual staging image done, then using a virtual staging app or software is probably the better way to go.

You typically pay for what you get, and PhotoUp virtual staging is no different. Our virtual staging cost slightly more than your average virtual staging software. We average $20 per image for standard staging, which includes up to 7 pieces of furniture and 1 room per frame.

Click here for more details on the cost of virtual staging.

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The Benefits of Virtual Staging Software

This approach can work for you if you’re in a real-time crunch and need to get something together quickly for a prospective buyer. All you need is a professional real estate photo and you can use any number of virtual staging software or virtual staging apps out there to drag and drop pieces of furniture into the room to give it a look that the buyer might appreciate.

It’s a good option to have when you need to move fast, and the virtual staging software providers generally offer a pay-as-you-go system of credits that you buy upfront and then work through, depending on how many images you need to stage.

The Issues with Virtual Staging Software

There are a number of drawbacks to using virtual staging software:

• You’re on your own. Virtual staging software can be tricky to use. Fitting furniture into the perfect spot, sizing furniture correctly so it doesn’t look too big/small in a space, not to mention making sure your final virtually staged photo actually looks realistic. There’s not a lot of room for error when you’re using a software-as-a-service (SAAS) solution for your virtual staging needs.
• Software can crash. The software almost never works as smoothly as you imagine it will. It’s fairly common to find yourself settling for a finished photo that you’re not entirely happy with. Getting the lighting in the room right, creating realistic shadows from the furniture and getting it all in proportion are harder to achieve than you imagine. There’s a reason that interior designers and photo editors are sought after professionals – it’s hard to do – so unless you’ve got a great design eye, well…the results can be a bit hit-or-miss.
• Doesn’t look realistic. Virtual staging looks best when it’s hard to tell that the furniture in the room is, well… virtual. Go figure! The process of making virtual furniture look realistic takes a great deal of time and skill that can not be implemented with simple virtual staging software or a free virtual staging app.

So if you’re ready to add virtual staging to your list of services and build your portfolio, then it’s certainly worth using professionals to make your virtual staging look as realistic as possible.

Start a trial account with PhotoUp today for a professional, stylish new look to your portfolio.

A room without furniture is like a refrigerator without food. You know its purpose, but you can’t use one without the other.

The same analogy should be used when thinking of marketing a home for sale. No matter how stunning the property is, if a buyer cannot visualize what each room will look like fully furnished, chances are he or she won’t want to come to view the property in person.

But how do you solve this issue if you can’t afford a staging company and only have a few days before the home needs to be listed online? You’re in luck! There are plenty of virtual staging companies out there to help you stage a room quickly and affordably.

Virtual staging is an aspect of graphic design where realistically designed and rendered furniture, decor, and accent pieces are added into a professionally shot photo of an empty room. Virtual staging is also faster and cheaper than physical staging. What are the other benefits of virtual staging, you ask? Here are some more advantages of using a virtual staging service.

Fortunately, all you need to do is take a photo of interior space and have it staged by a virtual staging company. Not only will this allow you to provide something extra to your real estate agents, but you’ll also save a lot of time, effort, and money for both you and your clients.

But what should you be looking for in a virtual staging company? The following tips will help you find the best provider for both you and your real estate clients.

1. Quality of execution in design

How the image looks after it’s staged can help drive traffic to a listing or push people away: it’s that simple. It’s a no-brainer that clear, crisp, and beautifully composed real estate photos can help attract home buyers. On the other hand, poor virtual staging that looks obviously fake or copy and pasted into an image will be easily noticeable by home buyers and could even drive people away from the listing.

Therefore, when choosing a virtual staging company, they should focus on both turnaround speed and quality, equally. Virtual furniture must be exceptionally designed and sensibly placed. Accents should be selected carefully so that they would match the room’s colors, atmosphere, and theme.

2. Realism

The basic purpose of virtual staging is to give viewers an impression of a fully furnished interior. Since the photo is a captured image of reality, virtual furniture also needs to look as real as possible.

Thus, your virtual stager should be able to produce highly realistic furniture and accent pieces. The realism should be such that the virtual furniture is indistinguishable from real furniture.

Realism is very important. But putting realistic virtual furniture in a photo is only half the battle. The best virtual staging partners will also include shadows, highlights, and other photo editing techniques to make sure that the virtual furniture looks as realistic as possible in the final image.

3. A good library of virtual furniture

Property interiors come in all colors, sizes, themes, and designs. As such, your virtual staging company should have a large database of virtual furniture, appliances, and accent pieces. The best virtual staging galleries should include all styles of furnishings, from classic to contemporary.

Having an expansive and comprehensive virtual furniture library allows you—whether you’re a real estate photographer, real estate agent, or property owner—to choose the furnishings that you feel look best in the room.

Most virtual staging companies will offer an online catalog of furniture so you are able to pick out the best set of furniture and decor to match each room of the house. For example, here is PhotoUp’s online virtual furniture catalog.

Of course, there’s always a chance that the specific furniture piece you’re looking for is not in a provider’s library. Therefore, it’s a good idea to choose a virtual staging company that also offers customization services. That is, they are willing to design virtual furnishings according to your instructions and preferences.

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4. Direct and frequent communication

Getting the best virtual staging photos requires you to effectively communicate with your provider. Before the designers work on your photos, you need to give them instructions, guidance, and direction as to what furniture you’d like and where you’d like it placed in the room. Your virtual stagers may also need to ask you questions about the project, and your responsiveness will help to keep the project moving along.

Your virtual staging team should have multiple lines of communication. An email is a great option for communicating with your provider, but there might be situations where you need to get in touch with them on the go. So a virtual staging company with a direct phone line or a chat feature is a great plus!

5. Fast turnaround time

The faster real estate photos are delivered, the sooner the house can be put on the market, and the quicker the home can sell. The best virtual staging providers will be aware of that urgency. As a rule of thumb, high-quality virtually staged images should be delivered within 2 business days or less. Any longer than that, and you should start looking for another virtual staging partner.

At PhotoUp, we understand that time is money. That’s why we guarantee a turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours for exceptionally virtually staged photos.

We highly recommend adding virtual staging as an additional service for any real estate photography business. By having a mutually beneficial partnership with a professional virtual staging company, you can become the one-stop shop for all of your real estate agent’s marketing needs.

You can just imagine the thousands of photography websites around. To stand out from the rest, you need to incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website. Why does SEO matter? How does SEO work? How do you increase your website’s SEO?

With the right SEO techniques, you can:

1. Attract the right target market
2. Increase traffic to your website, which helps to acquire more clients
3. Develop a client base that can refer you to even more prospects
4. Reduce paid advertising and subsequently, save money
5. Establish yourself as a credible and authoritative entity in your industry
6. Get connected with influencers in your industry
7. Provide great value to your clients
8. Answer common questions your clients or leads are asking

That’s a lot of advantages you can enjoy! So let’s start optimizing your photography website by following these useful and proven tips.

1. Insert keywords in your website’s page titles.

Check out your main page titles. Do they contain essential keywords? Do they describe exactly what the page is?

EXAMPLE: Rather than “How to be a Better Photographer” which is vague and too general, use the title “Tips in Becoming an Effective Real Estate Photographer.” The keyword being inserted is “real estate photographer,” which is easily crawled by search engine bots.

Also, rather than force keywords or search-friendly titles on existing pages, why not create new, search-engine friendly, and keyword-optimized pages? Each page that ranks in a search engine is like opening a new gateway to your website.

EXAMPLE: Let’s use the same keyword in the example above. Rather than inserting “real estate photographer” in an existing article or web content, create a new page or an article about essential photography gear or necessary skills that a professional real estate photographer should have.

2. Use the right keywords to optimize images.

You might think that only text-heavy websites use keywords to improve their online visibility. But no, the same principle also applies to image-rich websites. Thus, insert keywords in the following sections of your images:

• image title
• alt tags
• filename of the image
• text near the image

HINT: If you are using captions (and you should), include keywords here as well.

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3. Use long-tail keywords.

Most likely, you won’t rank favorably for competitive keywords, at least not right away. That is due to the saturation of competition. Being a new player in the space, your content will take some time and traffic in order to gain traction.

A good option is to utilize longer phrases that include multiple competitive keywords; in SEO terminology, these phrases are called long-tail keywords. They include three or four keywords that are very specific to what you are selling or offering. Long-term keywords are a good option since specific multi-word phrases have the tendency to rank well and more easily than generic single- or double-word keywords.

REMINDER: Make sure your caption, title, or description isn’t more than 60 characters, including spaces. This is because search engines, like Google and Bing, truncate phrases and sentences that go beyond this limit.

Let’s consider the title “Tips in Becoming an Effective Real Estate Photographer.” It has 54 characters, including spaces, which is adequate. Do not use “Excellent Tips in Becoming an Effective and Award-Winning Real Estate Photographer” as it has a character count of 82, including spaces. Google will truncate it at the 60th character.

Also, remember that the idea of keywords is to target words or phrases that people might type into Google or another search engine. While you might not rank favorably for “Boston Wedding Photographer”, you might have a better shot with a long-tail keyword phrase like “outdoor wedding at Boston golf course”. This is something a person looking to get married outside at a golf course near Boston might actually type in their search engine. Always remember that you should only use these long-tail keywords when appropriate like when you’re blog post is showing an outdoor wedding at a Boston golf course.

We will publish more tips in Part 2—tips that focus on how to get quality links. We will also give you some pointers on how to make your website more SEO-friendly and how a blog can help you get on top of the game. Stay tuned!