Table of Contents
- Why Editing Is Crucial for Showcasing Historic Homes
- Top 7 Real Estate Photo Editing Tips for Historic Homes
- Photo Editing for Historic Homes FAQ
- How PhotoUp Can Help Perfect Historic Home Photos
Historic homes hold a timeless charm that can’t be replicated. With their vintage woodwork, stained glass windows, and centuries-old craftsmanship, these homes tell stories of another era. However, when it comes time to list them on the market, capturing that charm in photos can be surprisingly tricky.
Unlike modern houses, historic homes present unique challenges for photographers, including dimly lit interiors, uneven lines, aging exteriors, and clutter that can distract from architectural details.
That’s why real estate photo editing is a critical step in the marketing process. Done right, editing can reveal the elegance and character of a home, helping it stand out online and sell faster—and often at a higher price.
Let’s show you how!
Why Editing Is Crucial for Showcasing Historic Homes 🏛️
A photograph is often the first—and sometimes only—opportunity for a buyer to fall in love with a historic property.
Unlike new builds, these homes need careful visual storytelling to communicate their value.
Here are 4 key reasons why real estate photo editing is crucial for showcasing historic homes in their best possible light:
1. Highlight Unique Features
From Victorian spindles to Art Deco tile, historic homes often include features that are hard to appreciate in raw, unedited photos.
Professional real estate photo editing brings these intricate details to life, ensuring they’re front and center.
2. Balance Authenticity With Market Expectations
Buyers want crisp, bright photos, but they also want to feel the warmth of a historic home.
Editing ensures images look polished while preserving the authenticity that draws buyers to these properties in the first place.
3. Overcome Technical Challenges
Older homes often have poor lighting, outdated layouts, and exterior imperfections.
Post-processing helps correct these issues so potential buyers see the home’s beauty—not just its flaws.
Remember that it’s crucial to disclose that your images have been altered if you use, for example, virtual staging to digitally stage rooms with outdated furniture and decor.
4. Improve Engagement and Sales Price
Professional-quality photos get more clicks, more showings, and more offers. They typically get 118% more online views and can enhance a property’s perceived value by as much as 39%.
For specialty homes, like historic properties, great real estate photo editing can directly impact perceived value.
In short, photo editing is not about changing a historic home—it’s about revealing its story.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at 7 editing tips that can help enhance your historic home listings and accelerate sales.
Top 7 Real Estate Photo Editing Tips for Historic Homes
Below are seven powerful editing techniques that can help photographers and real estate professionals capture the magic of these properties:
1. Correct Color Balance Without Losing Vintage Warmth and Feel 🎨
Historic interiors often feature warm materials like oak floors, brass fixtures, and rich paint tones. A raw image may show these elements as too yellow or dull.
Here are some editing tips to get the right color balance:
- Use white balance adjustments to ensure colors appear true to life
- Carefully maintain a warm undertone so the home doesn’t feel sterile or overly modernized
- And avoid over-brightening that washes out aged textures—let those patinas tell their story
Here are two tutorials that can help you achieve natural colors and brightness in your property photos:
With the help of these adjustments, the home will feel timeless yet vibrant, inviting buyers to imagine themselves in the space.
2. Enhance Details Through Sharpening 🖼️
In a regular photo, intricate details—like a carved banister, original fireplace mantel, or tin ceiling—may fade into the background.
Here are some editing techniques that can help you with selective sharpening:
- Apply localized sharpening to draw attention to craftsmanship
- Use clarity and texture sliders selectively so details pop without overprocessing the whole image
- And leverage HDR blending to bring out the details in your images
Check out these guides to learn how to sharpen and bring out the details in your images:
This ensures that architectural elements, which often justify a premium price, become a focal point that buyers can appreciate online.
3. Remove Distractions While Preserving the Home’s Character 🧹
Many historic homes come with dated furniture, temporary items, or even modern clutter that distracts from the space.
Clean up your images by:
- Using object removal tools to eliminate wires, trash bins, or distracting elements in photos
- Alternatively, use virtual staging to declutter messy rooms or perform virtual renovations where needed to show the home’s full potential
- Keep an eye on not over-sanitizing the space—historic homes should retain their lived-in feel
To learn how to declutter images, you can check out our tutorial on how to remove cords in Photoshop.
With these simple edits, you’ll get a clean, uncluttered presentation that allows the home’s character to shine through.
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4. Adjust Exposure for Difficult Lighting ☀️
Professional visuals can help homes sell 32% faster and at higher prices, as buyers are more likely to be drawn to listings that showcase properties in the best possible light.
Older homes tend to have small windows, dark hallways, and shadowy nooks, resulting in flat or underexposed photos.
Consider these edits for perfectly lit photos and great window views:
- Correct shadows and highlights in post-processing for balanced exposure
- Consider HDR blending to capture both the interior and exterior details without losing natural light
- Leverage color cast removal techniques to remove unwanted tints and ensure accurate colors
- Also, use window masking to showcase beautiful window views
For more details, check out these tutorials:
- How to remove shadows in real estate photos
- How to easily edit HDR real estate photos
- Removing color cast in Photoshop using 2 simple techniques
- How to mask windows in Photoshop
By leveraging these simple editing tips, you’ll create bright, inviting rooms that look true to life—not artificially lit.
5. Use Perspective Correction to Straighten Lines
Historic properties often have uneven floors and walls. Wide-angle lenses can exaggerate these imperfections.
Do this to ensure straight horizontal and vertical lines:
- Apply lens correction and perspective adjustments to fix leaning verticals and distorted rooms
- Make subtle corrections—don’t over-fix, as minor quirks are part of a home’s charm
To learn how to straighten lines, check out our tutorial on how to do lens correction in Photoshop and how to correct perspectives in Photoshop.
With these simple edits, you’ll achieve professional, clean lines that make the images look polished without deceiving potential buyers.
6. Replace Dull Skies on Exterior Shots 🌤️
Bad weather can ruin exterior photos, and sometimes there isn’t time to wait for perfect conditions.
With the help of sky replacement, real estate photographers can ensure bright and inviting photos, no matter the weather, at the actual photoshoot.
Here are some powerful editing tips to create perfect skies:
- Replace gray skies with natural blue skies or a gentle sunset glow to make the exterior more inviting
- However, avoid overly dramatic edits that feel unrealistic
Here are two tutorials that will help you create sunny and romantic skies:
These powerful editing techniques will ensure that the property stands out online with curb appeal that draws buyers in.
7. Subtle Lawn and Garden Enhancements 🌿
A beautiful old house can lose appeal if the lawn looks neglected in photos. Patching up brown spots and creating a green, lush lawn will help to captivate potential buyers’ attention.
Do these edits to enhance the garden:
- Enhance green tones, repair patchy grass, and tidy up flower beds using editing tools
- Highlight mature trees or period landscaping that complement the architecture
For more details, check out our guide on how to create a lawn in Photoshop.
This creates an outdoor space that looks as lovingly maintained as the home itself.
A historic home is more than just a property—it’s a piece of history.
High-quality, thoughtfully edited photos can tell their story and capture the imagination of buyers looking for something truly special.
By applying these 7 real estate photo editing tips, you can reveal the elegance and character of a home, helping it stand out online and sell faster.
Real Estate Photo Editing for Historic Homes FAQ
How much editing is too much when it comes to historic homes?
For historic homes, less is more. Editing should enhance—not replace—the home’s character. Avoid removing features or adding elements that misrepresent the property.
Can you make small, dark rooms look bigger?
Yes, through a mix of exposure adjustments, HDR blending, and slight perspective correction, you can make spaces appear more open and inviting while maintaining realistic proportions.
Are sky replacements and object removals considered misleading?
No, as long as they are used to remove temporary distractions and improve the viewing experience. Permanent features of the home should remain visible and unaltered.
Should you stage historic homes virtually?
Virtual staging can be helpful, but it’s important to use period-appropriate furniture styles that complement the home rather than clash with it.
Before we leave this topic, let’s take a look at how PhotoUp can help real estate professionals perfect their historic home photography.
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How PhotoUp Can Help Perfect Historic Home Photos 📸
Editing photos for historic properties takes time, skill, and a nuanced touch. Not all editors are trained to work with the quirks of older homes.
That’s where PhotoUp comes in!
Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with offices in Cebu, the Philippines, PhotoUp specializes in real estate photo editing with a team of experts who know how to:
- Balance color correction while preserving a home’s vintage character
- Remove distractions without overdoing it
- Perform exposure blending and sky replacements that look natural
- Create virtual staging that feels authentic
- And much more!
By outsourcing editing to PhotoUp, real estate photographers and agents can save hours of editing time, reduce costs, and deliver professional, high-quality images that attract serious buyers.
Best of all, our editing services are affordable, starting at the low cost of $1.50 per image for on-demand editing.
Additionally, Dedicated Editing can go as low as $0.50 per image, depending on your style and editing batch.
And there’s more…
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Real Estate Photo Editors
Ready-to-hire editors for real estate photo editing, and more.
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On top of that, PhotoUp also offers other powerful real estate marketing services, allowing you to expand your product offerings and become more valuable to your clients.
Here are some of our marketing tools:
- Virtual staging
- Virtual house tours
- Single property websites
- House portraits
- Floor plans
- And property flyers
With PhotoUp, you have everything you need to create eye-catching visuals, streamline your editing workflow, grow your business, and deliver high-quality content that sells.
How to Get Started
Getting started using PhotoUp’s photo editing service is super easy.
This is all you need 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.
And that’s it! It’s as simple as 1-2-3 to outsource your editing needs to the experts at PhotoUp.
👉 So, sign up for a free PhotoUp account today and get 10 free credits to experience the difference for yourself!
Partnering with experts like PhotoUp ensures that each image does justice to the property’s unique character while meeting today’s high standards for real estate photography.
We hope this blog post provided you with 7 powerful real estate photo editing tips for historic homes. Before you go, you may also want to check out the following resources:
