• What Is a Day-to-Dusk Image?
• How to Shoot for Day-to-Dusk Images (5 Best Practises)
• How to Edit a Day to Dusk Image in Photoshop
• Pricing and Client Value
• Leave Day-to-Dusk Editing to the Experts at PhotoUp!

Day-to-dusk or twilight images have become one of the most effective ways to elevate real estate listings. According to studies, using a twilight image as the listing’s hero photo averaged 76% more views than listings without.

Day-to-dusk images combine the visual drama of twilight photography with the flexibility of daytime shooting—allowing photographers to deliver stunning dusk-style images without waiting for the perfect sunset.

In this post, we’ll share how real estate photographers can capture homes during regular daylight hours and have them professionally edited to look as if they were photographed just before sunset. 

Let’s begin by taking a closer look at what a day-to-dusk image is.

What Is a Day-to-Dusk Image?

A day-to-dusk image is a professionally edited exterior photo that simulates the look and feel of early evening light🌅. 

Professional real estate photo editors replace the daytime sky with a realistic dusk sky, subtly enhance exterior brightness, and illuminate interior and exterior lights to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere.

The result is an inviting exterior with glowing lights, balanced exposure, and a dramatic dusk sky that instantly draws attention online.

Because these images are designed to feel natural—not overly stylized—the quality of the original photo plays a major role in how believable the final result looks. 

Why Day-to-Dusk Processing Is a Game-Changer for Real Estate Photographers

One of the biggest advantages of day-to-dusk processing is freedom. You no longer need to:

• Schedule shoots around sunset
• Wait for perfect weather
• Or, rush through twilight windows

Photographers can shoot in the morning or afternoon and still deliver striking dusk images that elevate listings and help agents stand out online.

This flexibility turns cloudy or rainy days into creative opportunities instead of setbacks.

However, shooting correctly is essential. To achieve realistic, high-quality results, it’s important to shoot with dusk processing in mind. 

Let’s take a look at what makes the shooting process different from a standard shoot.

Why Shooting for Day-to-Dusk Is Different

At first glance, day-to-dusk photography may seem similar to a normal exterior shoot. 

In reality, small decisions made on-site—lighting, exposure, and file format—can dramatically impact the final image.

Instead of chasing dramatic sunlight or deep shadows, your goal is neutrality and flexibility. 

A well-prepared image gives editors room to shape the scene into a convincing twilight moment without fighting harsh highlights or baked-in contrast.

Have You Ever Thought To

Outsource Photo Editing?

Try it today with 5 free edits from three professional photo editors.

Try PhotoUp Learn More

How to Shoot for Day-to-Dusk Images (5 Best Practises)🌆

Let’s look a bit closer at how to prepare your photoshoot so that you can create captivating twilight images. Here are the 5 key best practices to follow when shooting day-to-dusk photos:

1. Shoot on an Overcast or Cloudy Day

The best day-to-dusk images are captured when the weather is less than perfect. Cloudy, rainy, or overcast days reduce harsh sunlight and eliminate strong shadows across the home’s exterior. 

This creates even lighting, which allows editors to apply dusk effects smoothly and realistically.

In contrast, bright sunny days introduce deep shadows and strong directional light that can clash with a simulated evening sky. 

When possible, plan day-to-dusk shoots for days with soft, diffused light—it makes a noticeable difference in the final result.

2. Turn on All Interior and Exterior Lights

Lighting is one of the most important elements of a successful day-to-dusk image. Before shooting, turn on:

• All interior lights
• Exterior fixtures (porch lights, pathway lights, garage lights)
• And landscape lighting, if available

Open all curtains and blinds to let interior light spill out. This gives editors natural light sources to work with, making the final image feel authentic rather than artificially “painted on.”

The glow from interior and exterior lights is what gives twilight images their emotional impact—warm, inviting, and lived-in.

3. Expose Slightly Darker Than Normal

When shooting for day-to-dusk processing, it’s better to underexpose slightly rather than overexpose. For example, a darker exposure:

• Preserves highlight detail
• Prevents washed-out walls and skies
• Gives editors more control over brightness and contrast

If an image is too bright, it becomes difficult to transform it into a pre-sunset scene convincingly. 

Real estate photo editors can always lift shadows and add brightness—but recovering blown highlights is far more challenging. Think of your exposure as a neutral foundation, not the final look.

4. Always Shoot in RAW Format

File format matters more than many photographers realize—especially for advanced edits like day-to-dusk.

Here are the main benefits of RAW files:

• They capture full color and light data from the camera sensor
• They allow greater flexibility in exposure, color temperature, and highlights
• They maintain image quality through multiple editing stages

JPEG files, while smaller, discard data during capture and degrade further with each edit. This limits how far an editor can push the image without introducing artifacts or unnatural colors.

For the best possible results, always deliver RAW files when shooting for day-to-dusk processing.

5. Compose With Clean Lines

While not exclusive to twilight photography, clean composition becomes even more important when dramatic skies and lighting are added.

Before shooting, consider:

• Straighten vertical lines
• Remove vehicles, trash bins, and clutter
• Frame the home cleanly with balanced foreground elements

A strong composition ensures the added dusk elements enhance the property rather than compete with distractions.

And there you have it! 

By following these best practises, you’ll be able to achieve realistic, high-quality photos that can be turned into captivating twilight images in post-processing.

Have You Ever Thought To

Outsource Photo Editing?

Try it today with 5 free edits from three professional photo editors.

Try PhotoUp Learn More

With the shooting process in mind, let’s show you how to edit day-to-dusk images in Photoshop.

How to Edit a Day to Dusk Image in Photoshop🌃

To learn how to perform this powerful edit, you can either watch the video tutorial or continue reading the text below:

Start With the Windows

Step 1. Import your image into Lightroom and do basic adjustments. Make it a little darker as it’s a dusk image.

Step 2. Next, create a Virtual Copy.

Step 3. On that copy, adjust the glow of the windows to make it look like the light is on. Boost the Exposure and Temperature to create a glowing effect. 

Step 4. Now, move your images into Photoshop.

Step 5. In Photoshop, make the Window Layer on top and add an Inverted Mask (press and hold the ALT key while clicking the Masking button).

Step 6. Select the windows using the Pen Tool (P), then press the Delete button.

Step 7. Next, add an Outer Glow using the Layer style.

Step 8. Within the Layer Style, use the Sliders to adjust to an appropriate level.

Next, Edit the Sky 

Once you’re happy with the windows of the house, it’s time to work on the sky:

Step 1. Duplicate the base photo and go to the Channel panel and duplicate the Blue channel.

Step 2. Adjust the Levels in the Sky by pressing CTRL – L on your keyboard.

Step 3. Select the Non-Sky area, make it black, and use the Dodge Brush (O) to lighten the sky.

Step 4. Now, you want to Load the Channel as a Selection, and then click the Masking button.

Step 5. Next, Import the dusk sky photo that you want to use behind the building.

Step 6. Adjust its position and make sure to Blend it properly with the house. E.g you may want to use the Burn Tool to darken the house overall. Then, Save the new image. 

Step 7. Back in Lightroom, you can make one or two adjustments to the white balance until you’re happy with the final product. 

Use the Dusk Scene to Showcase the Property

Keep in mind that you’re showcasing a home for a potential buyer and not trying to create an award-winning nature photograph.

The dusk scene is there to show off the best features of the property and put the viewers in a calm, welcoming state of mind, so they look favorably on the listing.

The goal is to make home buyers think of themselves living in this incredible home and taking in the beautiful evening sunset.  

Final Adjustments for a Seamless Look

To make the final adjustments to your images, make sure to remove any unwanted elements and clutter. Also, remember to edit out harsh shadows or artificial lighting discrepancies to create a flawless image.

Lastly, ensure high-resolution images and vibrant colors to optimize your images for real estate listing platforms, and that’s it!

Now that you know how to shoot for day-to-dusk images and edit them in post-processing, let’s move on to pricing vs client value.

Pricing and Client Value🤝

Day-to-dusk processing typically costs a small additional fee per image. Many photographers pass this cost on to clients while charging a premium for the finished result.

Depending on the market, day-to-dusk images often sell for $20–$50 per image. Sometimes, a bit more for luxury listings.

Because these images significantly improve listing presentation and click-through rates, agents are often happy to pay for the added visual impact—making day-to-dusk a smart upsell for photographers.

In fact, having a twilight image as the hero image, which captures properties during the golden hour, increases showings by 3x times, so it definitely adds value to a listing.

Final Thoughts

Shooting for day-to-dusk images isn’t complicated—but it does require intention. 

By choosing the right lighting conditions, adjusting exposure, turning on lights, and shooting in RAW, you set your editing team up for success.

When done correctly, day-to-dusk images create emotion, drama, and curb appeal that standard daytime photos simply can’t match. 

With the right shooting technique and professional processing, they become a powerful tool for impressing clients and increasing revenue—no sunset required.

If you don’t want to spend hours in post-processing and just want to be out in the field shooting amazing property photos, we have the perfect solution for you – introducing PhotoUp!

Leave Day-to-Dusk Editing to the Experts at PhotoUp!🏞️

If you’re a real estate photographer or agent who wants to offer polished twilight-style images without scheduling shoots around sunset, PhotoUp provides a dependable, high-quality alternative. 

Our experienced editing team specializes in day-to-dusk transformations, turning standard daytime photos into striking twilight visuals that instantly elevate listings.

Beyond twilight conversions, PhotoUp supports a wide range of real estate photo editing needs, including:

• Exposure and lighting corrections
• Shadow reduction and low-light enhancement
• Blur correction for images shot without a tripod
• Cropping and visual refinements
• Lawn enhancement and realistic sky replacement
• Object and clutter removal
• Vertical and perspective alignment
• HDR blending
• And many other custom adjustments

From simple fixes to advanced edits, PhotoUp handles projects of all sizes and complexities with consistent results.

Why Work With PhotoUp?

Still not convinced? Here are some compelling reasons why you should consider outsourcing your editing to PhotoUp:

More Than Just Real Estate Photo Editing!

In addition to image editing, PhotoUp offers a full suite of real estate marketing services, including:

• AI Virtual staging
• Virtual house tours
• Single property websites
• And Property flyers

Adding these services expands your offerings and increases your value to agent clients—helping you grow revenue without increasing your workload.

How to Get Started

Here’s a step-by-step guide to using PhotoUp:

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.

Step 5. Download and start using your beautifully edited photos.

As simple as that!

With PhotoUp’s professional twilight editing, you can deliver eye-catching listing photos that attract attention, generate more interest, and help homes sell faster—without ever waiting for the perfect sunset.

Sign up for a free PhotoUp account today and explore how our expert editing team can help you produce standout real estate visuals! 

For a limited time, new users receive 10 free credits that can be applied to any PhotoUp service.

We hope this blog post helped you learn how to shoot for day-to-dusk images and enhance them in post-processing. Before you go, you may also want to check out some related resources:

• 9 Proven Reasons Why You Should Use Real Estate Twilight Photos
• How to Edit Twilight Real Estate Photos in Photoshop
• The #1 Edit to Create Stunning Real Estate Photos
• How to Edit for Retreat-Style Properties – Real Estate Photo Editing Tips
• A Complete Real Estate Photo Editing Tutorial for Beginners

Kristian Pettyjohn, the CEO of PhotoUp, a real estate photo editing company with offices in Grand Rapids, Michigan USA, and Cebu, Philippines shares his journey from founding PhotoUp to establishing the company as an industry leader.

PhotoUp offers professional photo editing and virtual staging services. Additionally, the company is a one-stop shop for real estate marketing and also offers additional services such as single property websites, floor plans, virtual tours, video editing, and much more.

With no further delay, let’s start the interview!

Can you kindly start by telling our readers about your background?

I grew up obsessed with video production in high school and college, which had a lot of cross-over with photography of course. Through college, while studying business and marketing, I ended up working for a high-end web design company and then became a licensed real estate agent on the tail of my schooling.

The combination of my interest in media, software development, real estate and business would ultimately culminate a few years later into the founding of PhotoUp in 2012.

As an entrepreneur and CEO, can you tell us about your entrepreneurship journey and how PhotoUp started? 

After a short and sweet run as a Realtor, I decided I was more interested in web design and software development, so naturally, I launched my own development company. It was through my software company that I initially was introduced to the Philippines.

And it wasn’t until a few years later that an old real estate buddy of mine introduced me to a real estate photographer he knew who needed some help with real estate photo editing. It sounded like an interesting project so we hired a few dedicated photo editors for him.

Before long it seemed there may be an opportunity to improve real estate photo editing outsourcing, so we founded PhotoUp in 2012.

What inspired you to start PhotoUp?

To be honest, PhotoUp was a much more random circumstance than it was premeditated. However, over time PhotoUp became my main focus rather than a side project and now it’s my full-time career.

Where is PhotoUp based, and how long has the company been in business?

PhotoUp has offices in Grand Rapids, Michigan USA and Cebu, Philippines. We’ve operated publicly since 2012, though we started early operations in 2011.

What have been your biggest challenges as a CEO of PhotoUp, and how did you overcome them?

Every year brings a new challenge, but certainly, super typhoon Rai which was a category 5+ storm that hit Cebu directly in December 2021 was the most challenging season operationally for the company.

It really revealed both some of our strengths as well as areas we can continue to improve redundancies. Through it all, we emerged a much stronger company, but it took a better part of a year for some of our employees to get back on their feet.

What makes PhotoUp different from other companies in the real estate photo editing industry?

I would say the three big areas that set PhotoUp apart from our competitors are: USA support, a focus on building software, not just services, and most recently the introduction of staffing, that is, having photographers work directly with their real estate photo editors.

The Real Estate Photography

Business Systems You Need

PhotoUp is the ultimate real estate photographer business platform.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

Would you kindly explain the difference between a dedicated photo editor and a distributed photo editor?

Sure. Distributed photo editing is how most traditional real estate photo editing desks run. You send your photos and the first editor to get to it does the editing. PhotoUp has a more advanced distributed editing system that looks at historical data between a photographer and editor to make this matching process better than most.

Dedicated photo editing on the other hand is basically hiring an employee. The photographer works directly with a photo editor to really dial in their quality and consistency, plus assist them with other tasks, such as building virtual tours, delivering photos, or doing marketing outreach to prospective clients.

With real estate photo editing as your main product offering, how many photo editors does PhotoUp currently have?

The business is very seasonal, but we typically have 180+ staff members year-round, with more seasonal staff to assist in the summer. We also have direct relationships with hundreds of contract photo editors as well. So it’s a bit of a moving target.

What are the advantages of hiring a dedicated photo editor?

Quality and consistency. A dedicated real estate photo editor is 100% focused on a photographer’s business. Naturally, this leads to much higher quality results than distributed editing ever could.

Is a dedicated editor the same as a virtual assistant? If not, kindly explain the difference.

Yes and no. A dedicated real estate photo editor is basically a specialized VA. Whereas VAs are typically more experienced in basic marketing and administrative tasks.

Just for our readers to get an idea, how much does PhotoUp’s real estate photo editing services cost?

Cost per edit ranges from $0.50 up to $2.00 based on if our photographers shoot single frames, HDR or flambient method and also depending if they choose dedicated or distributed. By far the least expensive editing on average comes from hiring a dedicated editor.

What other real estate marketing services does PhotoUp offer?

Our most popular additional service is real estate AI virtual staging. We’ve spent nearly five years becoming one of the top providers for VS in the country. We also offer 2D and 3D floor plan renders and real estate video editing.

Which product/service do you think is PhotoUp’s strongest? And why?

For a full-time professional real estate photographer, the answer is clear cut: hire a dedicated photo editor. You drop your cost per edit significantly and get the highest quality editing possible, plus they can help generate additional business in the slower season.

We also offer amazing single property websites which are growing in popularity as we continue to add more requested features.

Do you have any upcoming new product launches?

We do. In early 2023 we’re launching our new DIY virtual tour product, which is quite exciting. We’re also updating our plans to include at least 10 single property websites and 10 virtual tours with every plan.

This just provides more value to our photographers and provides another great opportunity for dedicated editors or VAs to assist photographers by building property sites and tours.

High-Quality & Consistent

Real Estate Photo Editing

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

Try 5 Free Edits Learn More

Can you share with us some of the factors that have made PhotoUp so successful?

The biggest thing is US phone support plus 24/6 chat support directly from our operations floor in the Philippines. You call, we answer. It’s so important to me that we offer instant support to all our photographers.

What can you share with us about your vision for PhotoUp’s future?

We’re really towing the line that media, not just photography, is the future of the industry. As such, we’re investing heavily in our single property websites and virtual tour products, plus we’re going to be introducing updated order forms for photo editing, virtual staging, and floor plans in the coming year.

We’re also looking to build more operational and marketing software for photographers to be a true end-to-end system for real estate photographers.

Do you see the market for real estate marketing changing? If so, how?

Now more than ever the real estate market is just volatile. However, I think this provides a big opportunity for real estate media professionals to promote the value of their services.

As there become fewer listings available, agents need to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Zillow says that over 80% of buyers, for instance, find floor plans and virtual tours really helpful. So providing these extra levels of service to agents right now can help them win more business.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for PhotoUp and its mission?

We just blog a lot! But really, our marketing budget is actually very small. We have found a lot of success writing thought-leading content for our customers, such as reviewing other products and services in our industry, talking about new technology, and creative ways to market their business.

Business For Good

Making A Positive Impact

We seek to put people, planet, profit, and purpose on equal footing.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

What advice would you give to someone just entering the field of real estate photography?

I think the biggest thing is to keep it simple and not to undersell yourself.

What is the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?

Haha, that’s an interesting question, not sure I have a good answer, but I will say starting a company overseas in a developing country is not for the faint of heart. We’ve had to navigate corrupt officials, very tricky international tax and accounting laws, and learn everything about labor legalities in the countries we operate… It’s a lot! 

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

First and foremost, we appreciate each and every one of our photographers. If you haven’t already tried out a dedicated editor, I’d recommend trying a test edit with three different editors, it really has been game-changing for a lot of our customers.

And of course, I must give a huge shout out to our entire team! It’s been a wild, challenging, and fruitful ten-year journey, and we’re all very excited for the future. As a company, we believe in being a social enterprise and having a positive impact wherever we operate. In fact, our mission is to put people, planet, profit, and purpose on equal footing in business and beyond.

It’s a beautiful thing to connect talent around the world with the real business needs of our clients. While we’ve come a really long way, we are humbled by the journey in front of us as we continue to create services, technology, and staffing solutions to help drive more value for all our stakeholders around the world!

How can customers connect with you?

The best way to reach me is to just shoot a message over to support@photoup.net or give our customer service line a call. I work directly with all our support and operations teams each day and work to solve any customer inquiries as quickly as we can.

And that’s all for this interview.

Why don’t you try us out for yourself?!

Sign up for a free PhotoUp account, and get 5 free edits to test our services!

• Phixer Photo Editing vs PhotoUp
• Our Conclusion – Which Is the Best Service?
• Get the Best Photo Editing Today – Partner with PhotoUp

Thinking about using Phixer’s photo editing services to enhance your listing photos? Then take a moment and read this comparison article to help you decide.

The vast majority of buyers start and conduct their home search online, looking through listing photos to help them decide which properties to see in person. 

This means the quality of your listing photos is essential to getting showings and offers. And to get the best photos, you need to work with a professional photo editing service. 

So, in this post, we will look at two photo editing providers, Phixer vs PhotoUp – and compare them to see which is the best service.

Phixer Photo Editing vs PhotoUp

Phixer is a photo editing technology company whose services are aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at real estate photographers and sales professionals. 

Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Phixer was launched in 2009 and quickly expanded with editing teams in India, the Philippines, and Singapore by 2010.

Today, their 900 digital photo editors serve real estate sales professionals in over 40 countries with the following photo editing services:

• Photo editing and image retouching
• Exposure correction and line alignment
• Sky replacement, twilight effects, and landscaping augmentation
• And object removal and decluttering

Reading the Phixer website, you quickly see that they are a large company, processing over 50,000 real estate images and videos a day from international clients.

PhotoUp is also a global real estate marketing service company working with an array of international real estate photographers and sales professionals. 

Launched in 2012, PhotoUp’s sales offices are in the US and their large, highly skilled photo editing teams are in the Philippines.

As a company, PhotoUp strives for exceptional quality in its work, matched with outstanding customer support and experience. Their goal is to make it easy and affordable to order the highest-quality real estate photo editing that is then delivered quickly.

PhotoUp’s size, dedication to excellence, and superior customer support are central reasons why they’re the industry leader.

All right, now with that basic introduction, let’s compare these two companies in terms of the following:

• Account creation & pricing
• Production & turnaround time 
• Customer support 
• And image quality

1. Account Creation & Pricing

Placing a photo editing order with Phixer was quick and straightforward.

You start by creating an account. Then you can simply place your order. The entire process was easy to understand. 

And you can easily select additional editing services by using checkboxes. 

In terms of pricing, Phixer unfortunately makes learning its pricing a bit difficult. They don’t feature a pricing list on the website. Instead, I had to Google Phixer’s pricing separately to find their pricing buried in a blog post.

Once I found it, here’s what I learned:

• Basic photo editing services — such as color enhancement, cropping, and exposure correction — are $2 to $5 per image
• High-End Photo Editing – such as HDR blending, sky replacement, and object removal — $10 to $25 per image

I should note, they do provide a bit more pricing details once you’ve started your order, but again, they don’t provide specific prices. For example:

• I couldn’t find any mention of bulk discounts 
• There aren’t pricing or service FAQs 
• But they do offer a free, $30 trial, so that’s good

Next, how about creating an account and placing an order with PhotoUp?

Placing a real estate photo editing order with PhotoUp is extremely easy and fast. Opening a PhotoUp account is free and currently comes with a bonus of 5-free edits.

In terms of payment, PhotoUp relies on a credit system and they offer discounts for bulk buying of credits. Their standard plans are:

• $1.15 per credit for subscription clients
• $1.50 per credit for on-demand, pay-as-you-go clients

Standard photo editing costs are as follows:

• Single exposure – 1 credit
• HDR processing – 1.25 credits
• Flambient editing – 1.5 credits

Next, let’s take a look at production and turnaround times for both companies. 

High-Quality & Consistent

Real Estate Photo Editing

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

Try 5 Free Edits Learn More

2. Production & Turnaround Time

Phixer allows you to select your turnaround time from the following options:

• 12 hour
• 18 hour 
• 24 hour

However, there are additional “rush fees” if you select the 12 and 18-hour options. 

Phixer does offer one more option — you can download their photo editing app which allows a quicker turnaround time of around 8 hours. However, going through the app might affect the quality of the editing.

PhotoUp provides fast turnaround times and offers several options for image delivery:   

• 24 hours – PhotoUp promises a standard 24-hour turnaround on every photo editing order
• Rush options are available on most orders for just a slightly higher cost
• Also, PhotoUp knows your time is valuable and that timing in real estate sales matters, so they will refund 1 credit for every 5 minutes that an order is delivered past the quoted deadline

To further demonstrate their quick turnaround commitment, if images are very late, (a rare occurrence) they’ll provide up to a 50% discount on the entire batch.

For the next part of our comparison, let’s take a look at the customer support offered by both companies. 

3. Customer Support

Phixer takes customer support seriously and offers the following contact options:

• US telephone support
• Email support
• And live Chat

One additional benefit, Phixer offers 24/7 customer service. 

However, it’s important to call out that Phixer’s service priority is large-scale professional customers who purchase at least 3000 monthly credits ($3,000/month).

That means smaller volume clients might not get top-level service attention.

Like Phixer, PhotoUp also offers robust customer service with US phone, email, and live chat, as part of all of their plans. And their chat and email support are available 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday.

Also, their core sales/support team is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You can contact them easily and directly at (888) 330-7559.

Well, we’re almost through with our comparison. Our last item is to examine the crucial issue of photo editing image quality.

4. Image Quality

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 photos are a primary factor in helping them choose which homes they will visit.

Phixer’s photo editing looks decent, but the view through the window was a bit washed out in this example. You can view more samples on their website.

PhotoUp’s high-resolution photo editing looks fantastic. To see more, have a look at some real estate photo editing examples.

Clearly, both real estate photo editing services do outstanding work and there is little difference in terms of the quality of the images.

So, with our comparison complete, let’s review our results to see which photo editing service is the best option.

Have You Ever Thought To

Outsource Photo Editing?

Try it today with 5 free edits from three professional photo editors.

Try PhotoUp Learn More

Our Conclusion – Which Is the Best Service?

Phixer makes it easy to place orders and offers high-quality photo editing, so it’d be hard to not consider using them for editing real estate images. 

Still, are there any reasons to hesitate about using their real estate photo editing services? A few concerns do stand out as worthy of consideration.

First, it was difficult to find Phixer’s pricing information before placing an order. Second, Phixer is a large company that prefers working with high-volume clients, so medium and smaller-sized customers might receive less than their best efforts and attention. 

Perhaps even more importantly, Phixer tries to steer its smaller customers toward its smartphone app. 

This means that Phixer seeks to get some clients to do most of the editing themselves, which many real estate sales professionals lack the time or experience to do. 

Further, while quality certainly matters, so does the price. And Phixer’s pricing is slightly high — at least more expensive than PhotoUp:

• Standard photo editing with Phixer – $2 to $25 per image
• Standard photo editing with PhotoUp – $1.50 to $15 per image

With that said, it’s time to render a verdict — which real estate photo editing service is best – Phixer or PhotoUp?

Based on all of the above, the answer is PhotoUp. They offer outstanding quality with fast turnaround times at great prices — and they provide smaller clients the same excellent service they provide to their larger clients.

Besides, PhotoUp’s real estate photo editing samples speak for themselves:

One additional advantage to PhotoUp is they are deeply committed to the idea that business should be a force for good, benefiting clients, employees, stakeholders, and the communities in which they operate. 

Because of this commitment the company supports local projects aimed at environmental sustainability, employee education, gender equality, health care services, and community economic development. 

Get the Best Photo Editing Today – Partner With PhotoUp

PhotoUp’s expert real estate photo editing team is ready and eager to help with all your real estate photo editing needs.

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.

As an additional benefit, PhotoUp also offers a full range of real estate marketing services such as:

• AI Virtual staging
• Single property websites
• Virtual house tours 
• Property flyers
• And more!

Get started with PhotoUp today and we’ll help you create amazing and appealing real estate photography that will sell your listings quickly and for higher prices. 

And did we mention that you get 5 free edits when you sign up?

In summary, this post compared Phixer’s photo editing vs PhotoUp to see which is the best service. And based on our comparison, we conclude that PhotoUp is the better choice.

We hope this post helps you decide where to go for photo editing services. If you found this post valuable, you’ll also want to check out the following, related resources:

• How to Edit Real Estate Photos (Top 11 Techniques)
• 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?

by Jeremy Daniel

More and more real estate photographers are discovering the value and benefits of partnering with companies like PhotoUp, Phixer, and BoxBrownie for their real estate photo editing needs. Beautiful, quality real estate photos are vital in today’s real estate industry, and these three companies are at the top when it comes to quality, turnaround, and customer service.

But it’s easier said than done to become one of the best real estate photo editing companies on the market. Companies in the space are being pushed by the industry to offer faster turnaround, better quality, more consistent editing, and additional services in order to meet the demand of photographers and their real estate clients.

Despite the fact that there are a countless number of real estate photo editing companies out there, there are only three that really stand out from the pack, in my opinion: PhotoUp, BoxBrownie, and Phixer. The others are playing catch-up and still have a ways to go.

So, I decided to take a comparison tour of their services, prices, and websites, to look for similarities and differences, and try to help you decide which real estate photo editing company gives you the best value for your money.

PhotoUp – Real Estate Photo Editing and Marketing

PhotoUp is a real estate photo editing and real estate marketing company headquartered out of Grand Rapids, Michigan with their editing, design, and development teams based out of Cebu City in the Philippines.

Services

• Real Estate Photo Editing (starting at 0.75 credits/image): PhotoUp offers high quality real estate photo editing that matches your style and editing techniques. PhotoUp also allows you to select who edits your images. You can select from:

• * Distributed Editing (0.75 credits/image) – Any available team member
  
• * Standard Editing (1 credit/image) – Their system will match your images with your best rated available editors.
• * Top Editor (1.5 credits/image) – PhotoUp automatically matches you with your top rated editors to ensure the best possible quality.
• * Editing Virtual Assistant (starting at $7.71/hour) – Choose to work directly with one of your best editors on a daily/monthly basis.
• * Virtual Staging (25 credits/image): PhotoUp offers a virtual staging uploader and white labeled catalog full of over 1000+ pieces and sets of virtual furniture categorized by room type and style.
• * Virtual Assistants (starting at $7.71/hour): Experienced, english speaking and affordable virtual assistants based in the Philippines to help with administrative tasks, photo editing, or real estate transactions.
• * Floor Plans (starting at 20 credits): Choose 2D or 3D floor plans, or a combo of the two. Prices start at $20 and go up from there, depending on how the number of floors. All that is required from you is a simple sketch or floor plan mock up, and floor plans will be ready in under 24 hours
• * Property Websites (starting at 9 credits): Customizable single property websites that are easy to build and manage with simple, elegant templates. All property websites are fully mobile responsive, which means they will look great on any device.
• * Photography & Realtor Websites (starting at $5/month): Great portfolio websites for real estate professionals to showcase their work. PhotoUp’s website brand, Folio, offers template-based or fully customizable websites that are quick, easy to manage, and affordable.
• * Video Editing & Design Services (coming soon!): Some insider info that I picked up from PhotoUp is that they will soon be adding real estate video editing and real estate design services sometime in 2021, so stay tuned!
  

Pricing

• * Credits – PhotoUp uses a credit system where credits can be used for just about everything that PhotoUp has to offer.
• * Plans – You’ll select a plan based on the size and needs of your business and all plans come with credits starting at $1.00. Subscriptions start at $49 per month and include credits, free storage, a number of free rush deliveries and rollover credits.
• * Overage – If you use your allotment of credit, there is a small overage fee for going over your plan.
  

Turnaround Times

• * 24 Hours (included) – All PhotoUp plans come with 24 hour turnaround on every photo editing batch.
• * Rush Options – PhotoUp offers 12, 15, and 18 hour rush options for most editing orders.
• * Free Next Day Delivery (Pro Plus and above) – Upload orders by 6:00 PM or 9:00 PM on weekdays to have your orders delivered by 9:00 AM next morning or 12:00 PM next day. You automatically receive free next day delivery when you subscribe to a Pro Plus plan or above.
• * Late Delivery Refund – PhotoUp will refund 1 credit for every 5 minutes a batch is delivered past the quoted deadline.
• * If images are delivered late enough, they will provide up to a 50% discount on the entire batch.
  

Customer Support

• * PhotoUp offers live chat, email and phone support with all of their plans. They are available 24 hours/day Monday through Saturday and all of their customer support and sales people speak great english! Their core sales/support team is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• * Don’t believe me? Give them a call at (888) 330-7559 and ask for Alec or Devon.
• * For a quick answer to your basic questions, check out their support portal, FAQ page, or simply chat with a member of their sales/support team.
  

BoxBrownie – Real Estate Photo Editing & Virtual Staging

Services

• * Image Enhancement ($1.60/image)
• * Virtual Staging ($24/image)
• * Day to dusk ($4/image ) – Replace the daytime sky with a customized dusk look
• * Object removal ($4 for 2 items; US $8 for 3 or more items) – Billed separately from virtual staging
• * Copywriting (From $28 and up) – BoxBrownie will assign a copywriter to write the text for your marketing material
• * 360 Virtual Tours ($16-24) – Showcase your property from every angle with a quick and easy no subscription tour creation service
• * 2D and 3D Floor Plan Redraws ($24-36)
• * Renders ($280 and up) – Bring plans to life for a wide range of plans and designs
  

Pricing

BoxBrownie charges per action per item. Prices start at $1.60 for basic image enhancement and go from there.
They have a large menu of items that they offer, and the price list is quite extensive.

Turnaround

• * Quick and efficient. One day for images and two days for virtual staging.
• * Unfortunately, no rush options are available.
• * All purchases are final and BoxBrownie does not offer refunds.
  

Customer Support

• * Customer support was available, although not entirely helpful.
• * The size of the company and the number of options that they offer means that their support lacks that personal touch.

There is no doubt that BoxBrownie is a quality offering when it comes to real estate photography marketing. The service is fast and professional, albeit a little more expensive than the PhotoUp subscription services. But unless you’re a large, commercial realtor, it can sometimes feel like overkill. Personally, the number of services offered overwhelmed me a little. The commercial real estate, online retail, and automotive aspects of the services added little value and more complexity as compared to PhotoUp and Phixer, in my opinion.

Phixer – Real Estate Photo Editing & Video Editing

Services (All services are offered on a Pay As You Go system)

• * Photo Editing
• * Video Editing – Upload your raw footage and the team will turn it into 4K quality video
• * Lawn Replacement – The team will replace your lawn with a lush green, perfectly manicured landscape.
• * Declutter – Removal of items from any photo
• * Virtual Twilight – Choose a beautiful twilight sky for your daytime images.
• * Virtual Staging
• * Phixer App – DIY applicaton geared towards real estate agents that promises photos back in 8 hours or less. First 10 images you process on the app are free.
  

Pricing

Phixer operates on a monthly credit system. You can get 40% off your first month, thereafter it’s $1 per credit, with more services being added (e.g quicker turnaround time, revisions, and priority support on the bigger packages).
For video, the basic video starts at 65 credits for anything under one minute and goes all the way up to 149 credits for two-minute-long videos with all the bells and whistles.

Turnaround

• * 24 hour turnaround time for Starter and Standard packages.
• * 18 hour turnaround for Advanced and Professional packages.
  

Customer Support

• Priority support is on offer for Professional customers who purchase at least 3000 monthly credits ($3,000/month).
• For any other questions, the FAQ section is surprisingly helpful and informative.

A lot of Phixer’s focus is placed on their smartphone app, which tells me that their main focus is heading towards real estate agents and realtors, not real estate photographers. They encourage their users to do a lot of the editing themselves, which I find to be almost counterintuitive. It’s a decent photo editing service but in that regard, it differs substantially from PhotoUp and BoxBrownie.

Conclusion

PhotoUp, BoxBrownie, and Phixer are all great services in their own right. Each offers a tremendous amount of scope for real estate professionals, whether you are a photographer, real estate agent, or property manager. I found BoxBrownie to be a little too geared for large-scale, commercial users and Phixer a little too niche and unresponsive.

PhotoUp struck the right balance for me – they’re big enough to handle any real estate job but small enough to offer intimate personal guidance and a chance to really get to know their customer support team and the editors who are working on your images.

Do some digging into each service yourself and choose a real estate photo editing company that works best for you!

Comparing and contrasting two of the best real estate photo editing companies!

“Real estate photography” and “real estate photo editing” are becoming increasingly popular searches on the Internet. There are a number of different companies and service providers that you can choose from.

Today, we want to compare the services of PhotoUp to those of BoxBrownie.

These are two of the most prominent players in the industry, and we want to help you find where the comparative strengths and weaknesses are, what is similar and what’s different, and what you, the consumer need to know in order to make an informed decision.

Ready? Let’s get started!

What Real Estate Photography Services Do They Offer?

PhotoUp

PhotoUp is a US-based web service that offers:

• Real estate photo editing
• Virtual staging services
• Floor plans
• Single property websites
• Property flyers
• House portraits
• Virtual assistants and more for the real estate industry.

In addition, PhotoUp also offers a state-of-the-art system for uploading, downloading, and delivering images to clients.

Not to mention the ability to add team members and white label their platform and customize it to your own real estate photography business.

BoxBrownie

BoxBrownie is a large, Australian-based web service that offers automotive and online retail photo editing services in addition to commercial and residential real estate.

It’s a one-stop shop with a little bit of everything for all aspects of the visual presentation online.

1. Product Quality

Both PhotoUp and BoxBrownie offer some of the highest real estate photo editing quality in the industry.

Whether you shoot single RAW exposures, HDR, or require manual blending of images, they’re all available on either platform.

Photos that pass through either of these services are uploaded through their proprietary software. They then go through an editing checklist that includes:

• White balancing
• Sharpening
• Straightening
• Tone adjustment
• Dust spot removal

And much more before they are approved for return to the client.

Photo Editing Examples

To better illustrate the quality of their services, here’s an example of a test image that was sent to both PhotoUp and BoxBrownie.

You can decide for yourself what type of quality you’d prefer.

First, here’s an image example from PhotoUp:

And here’s one from BoxBrownie:

Additionally, both PhotoUp and BoxBrownie offer 2D and 3D floor plan modeling, which can be rendered from a simple hand-drawn sketch or floor plan image provided by the photographer or realtor.

BoxBrownie has a more detailed offering in this category. Clients can select a 2D Textured option where texture features such as carpets, tiles, and decking are included. As well as custom floor templates that include your company branding.

More Than Industry Leading

Real Estate Photo Editing

PhotoUp is the end-to-end business platform for real estate photographers.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

2. Team of Photo Editors

However, when it comes to editing teams and how each company is structured, these two companies have somewhat different models.

PhotoUp employs both in-house and remote editors in order to offer both a distributed and in-house editing model, allowing clients to have more control over who edits their images.

The in-house editor makes up teams of 6 to 8 editors per team and clients are assigned to a team of editors based on the clients shooting style and editing requirements.

This team structure helps to ensure better quality and consistency over time.

On the other hand, BoxBrownie has set up a completely remote model where they employ editors all over the world who work from their own home offices.

BoxBrownie does not offer team editing and simply assigns your images to the first available editor.

3. Turnaround Time

Both services pride themselves on a quick and easy process and a speedy turnaround time. Both PhotoUp and BoxBrownie offer a turnaround time of under 24 hours from start to finish.

PhotoUp also offers Next Day Delivery for free to any client on a Pro Plan or above. In addition, they also offer 12, 15, and 18-hour rush options for a small additional fee.

With PhotoUp’s user-friendly dashboards, you can track the process of your jobs as they move through the process of uploading, editing, ready, recent, and even revisions.

To see exactly how easy-to-use our software is, check out our real estate photo editing uploader video tutorial:

As simple as that!

To conclude, in a trial where both services were tested with a set of photographs on a Monday morning, PhotoUp was slightly faster, yet both services delivered the test images in under 8 hours.

4. The Sign-Up Process

The two services take quite a different approach when it comes to onboarding new clients, and it is reflective of their differing cultures.

BoxBrownie values speed first and foremost. A simple email and a password get you up and running with the service.

In contrast to BoxBrownie’s rushed sign-up process, PhotoUp takes a far more proactive approach with a series of questions designed to help them get to know you better. And which will tailor the service to your particular style.

The four questions in the simple sign-up process give them a clear idea of what exactly you need from the service.

And once you’re signed in, during your first interactions, they have helpful prompts explaining different features.

For example, they want to know what output quality you would like from your pictures (JPEG 70, JPEG 100, or TIFF). And they walk you through the process of watermarking pictures if that’s something you need.

Both services are efficient, but PhotoUp opts for a more engaging and personalized experience.

The Real Estate Photography

Business Systems You Need

PhotoUp is the ultimate real estate photographer business platform.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

5. Pricing

While the costs of processing per image are very similar for the two services, their approach to billing is quite different.

PhotoUp works within a credit system where you buy an allotment of credits at the beginning of the month (all credits start at $1.00) based on your volume.

BoxBrownie on the other hand, asks you to prepay a dollar amount and use that money on your jobs until you need to reload your account again. No monthly subscription is required.

PhotoUp’s pricing is extremely competitive, especially for heavier users who can pay as low as $0.75 per image.

By comparison, BoxBrownie’s pricing starts at $1.60 per image. Both prices listed are in USD.

BoxBrownie has a far wider price range that you will need to consider as you decide what services you are going to need.

For example, simple image enhancement starts at $1.60 but then climbs all the way up to $600 for the cost of rendering an external image of large development.

6. Location

BoxBrownie is an Australian company operating from the small town of Maroochydore, Queensland.

And PhotoUp is an American company headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. However, their editing operations are located in Cebu, Philippines.

Both companies are success stories that adopt a cloud-based model to serve clients all over the world.

However, when it comes to software support and phone support, there is an advantage to working with a business in the same or similar time zone.

Therefore, it might be much easier for US or Canadian-based companies to work with PhotoUp. Whereas Australian businesses might find it easier to work with BoxBrownie, simply because of the ability to call them during their normal business hours.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, there are many similarities between the services PhotoUp and BoxBrownie have to offer.

They both provide excellent real estate photo editing services to real estate photographers and they both have the ability to bring your photography business to the next level.

But PhotoUp is far more engaged with its consumers.

They really hold your hand through the first few interactions, showing you different features in the dashboard and how you will use them. And they encourage a lot of interaction between you, the platform, and the editing team.

BoxBrownie has a larger offering and caters to many more niche markets than PhotoUp. For example, portrait retouching, copywriting, and even computer renders and automotive photo editing.

Because of this, they tend to not be as focused on the real estate market and the specific needs of real estate photographers.

PhotoUp, on the other hand, is laser-focused on real estate and everything that is needed to make your life easier as a real estate photographer.

They have a user-friendly, tailored approach with a very strong footprint in the American and Canadian marketplace, not to mention the responsiveness and availability of their support staff.

At the end of the day, the choice is yours.

When selecting a partner for real estate photo editing, virtual staging, and/or floor plans, it’s tough to go wrong with either option.

We hope this PhotoUp vs BoxBrownie post helped make your decision easier on which service to choose. Before you go, you may also want to check out the following resources:

• BoxBrownie Virtual Staging Review
• PhotoUp Virtual Staging Review: The Best Virtual Staging Service?
• Best Real Estate Photo Editing Services (in 2022)
• Hot Real Estate Photography Statistics You Need to Know in 2022

Now, you can transfer your edited images directly from PhotoUp to HDPhotoHub, eliminating time spent downloading and re-uploading from one platform to the other. The new integration is also mobile friendly so you can transfer images with just a few clicks while you’re out shooting!

Dashboard view before connecting your PhotoUp account to HDPhotoHub:

The Real Estate Photography

Business Systems You Need

PhotoUp is the ultimate real estate photographer business platform.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

Dashboard view after connecting your PhotoUp account to HDPhotoHub:

Sign up for a free HDPhotoHub account today!

Thank you for being part of our story, and we look forward to helping you grow your business with PhotoUp and HDPhotoHub!

We recently welcomed Alec Goorhouse to the PhotoUp family. Alec will be joining the Client Success Team, helping photographers scale and grow their businesses with the PhotoUp team and platform. Let’s know more about Alec, the newest PhotoUp team member.

Q: Tell us more about yourself.

A: Hi guys! My name is Alec Goorhouse. I’m from The River City of Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am 25 years old and the youngest of three siblings. I value a good work-life balance, so I tend to spend a lot of my time hanging out with family and friends.

Q: Can you explain your role at PhotoUp?

A: PhotoUp hired me as an Account Manager and member of the Client Success Team. My role is mainly aimed at helping with operations and the support team to ensure success with client on-boarding. My task also involves updating and managing the weekly and annual sales reports, following up with new leads, and ensuring new photographers understand how our editing system and team operate.

Q: I hear you have a passion for marketing. What triggered this passion?

A: Well, it all started when I took a marketing research class during my junior year in college. Our class’s final project was to find more ways to bring people to the Grand Rapids Museum. We were given a small budget and were able to come up with our own ideas on how to accomplish the task at hand.

The best part of the project was experiencing a great surge of initiative and imagination. I’ve never imagined that we could be incredibly creative in the process. The ability to be creative and brainstorm triggered my passion for marketing. Inspired by this, I switched my major from a Bachelors of Business to a Bachelors of Marketing after the class finished.

Q: What do you like about working with PhotoUp’s clients?

A: I really enjoy learning about their shooting style and how I can better assist them in their photo editing and business needs. I also like assisting when they have issues. It gives me a better understanding of how to solve problems and to prevent more issues from happening in the future.

Q: How do you help photographers who are new to the PhotoUp system?

A: With new photographers I want to make sure the onboarding process goes as smooth as possible. I will give them a couple calls through the first month to make sure they are happy with our service and to answer any questions they may have about our platform.

The Real Estate Photography

Business Systems You Need

PhotoUp is the ultimate real estate photographer business platform.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

Q: What are your first impressions about PhotoUp?

A: I enjoy the fact that PhotoUp is an ever-changing, ever-growing creative environment. I’m inspired by the leadership and the way that all employees are respected for their contributions. A company that supports my passions encourages creativity, and develops my strengths is something worth working in.

Q: What are your expectations about working in PhotoUp?

A: I expect to embrace the company culture and provide support where needed as I grow in my role as an account manager.

Q: What are your other interests and hobbies?

A: I really enjoy being active. I started playing soccer at a young age, and I still play today. When I’m not playing soccer, you can find me running on the streets of Grand Rapids. I also enjoy spending my summer weekends up in northern Michigan, hiking and hanging out around the beautiful lakes with family and friends.

Q: What are a few of your professional and personal goals?

A: Professionally, my short-term goal is to meet and exceed the expectations of my current job description. Long-term, I hope to contribute on a broader scale and look forward to developing relationships with other employees and new and existing customers.

Personally, I want to continue working on having a healthy work-life balance. I want to continue being active, maybe even competing in a marathon by the end of 2018.

Q: Any words you want to impart to the PhotoUp team?

A: I’m excited to be a part of such a great team and look forward to what’s ahead!

And we’re also excited to have you join our ranks, Alec. We’re pretty sure you’d make a great addition, and your skills and knowledge will help move the business forward. Welcome to PhotoUp, Alec!

What differentiates a good leader from an exceptional one? Skills, experience, and finesse at work certainly help, but those are just the toppings of the cake. More importantly, an exceptional leader is one who makes it his personal duty to support, inspire, and motivate everyone on his team. He does his best to help the individuals under his care to reach their personal and professional goals.

Mike, PhotoUp’s PM Shift manager, is one of these exceptional leaders, having a huge heart for his team. Let’s know more about him.

Q: Tell us more about yourself.

A: Hello! I’m Mike. I grew up in Talisay City, Cebu; but during my college years, I moved to Metro Cebu to be conveniently closer to the university I studied in. I took up and completed Advertising Arts in the University of San Carlos-Talamban Campus in 2013. A year after I graduated, I joined the PhotoUp family and have been working here ever since.

Q: Can you explain your role at PhotoUp?

A: I’m the shift manager of the PM shift. In a nutshell, I oversee the entire shift operations and ensure that they deliver quality results to our clients.

The simplest way to describe my role is that I am a problem solver. Those problems may be simple technical issues that pop up during the workday, which can be fixed easily. But there are also other concerns that require more effort on my part such as giving extra time and attention to particular editors who are struggling with their work.

I also formulate medium- and long-term solutions to increase efficiency on our shift. This includes tweaking our shift workflow and streamlining our procedures so our operations will be as efficient as possible.

Finally, I provide my team a lot of support so they can improve in their work or reach their personal and professional goals.

Q: What is your leadership style? How do you describe yourself as a leader?

A: I’m the type of leader who makes an effort to find out what fuels the interest of each of my team members. Yes, individually! That’s because everyone has different goals, personalities, and concerns. And these may change over the course of their career.

I strongly believe people work best when they feel that are contributing significantly to an organization’s goal. Figuring out how to align the goals and needs of each individual team member with the goals and needs of PhotoUp and our clients is where my time is best spent.

Q: At which point in your tenure did you realize that a managerial position is for you?

A: To be honest, it took a while. You see, I’m not really a very outgoing person. As far as I can remember, I’ve always enjoyed keeping to myself and burying myself in books and films. In fact, I still have doubts on my confidence in doing my role properly. I feel there is still so much for me to learn.

Despite my doubts, there are moments of pride—that indescribable pride in seeing someone you’ve coached and nurtured achieve his or her goals. Pride in seeing someone overcome his or her own weaknesses and fears. Pride in seeing my teams goals being worked on and attained. These are moments that I look forward to having with my team.

Q: What are the challenges that you face as a shift manager?

A: Communicating my own long-term view of the shift to my team and their editors is perhaps my biggest challenge. I always encourage them to look towards a long-term goal and connect that with the idea that what they are doing right now can impact that long-term goal. I’m still working on this, and I hope to be able to spread this idea.

The Ultimate All-in-One

Real Estate Photographer Business Platform

Grow a successful real estate photography business with PhotoUp.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

Q: Leading an entire shift is tough. How do you keep your team motivated?

A: Being open and approachable to your team is definitely one act that alleviates stress all around. Ideas, concerns, and feedback can be immediately shared and discussed.

In terms of motivation, one thing that I’ve been doing is to delegate tasks. Delegating gives people a chance to show their capabilities and skills. People feel empowered when they are allowed to make their own decisions (and mistakes). We aim to keep the work environment this way and allow people to find their own way to grow.

Q: Can you tell us about the most difficult situation you experienced as a team? How did you overcome it?

A: The pace of the operations here in the editing floor is quite fast and extremely time-sensitive. People can be in a hurry, sometimes under pressure to meet their quotas especially during peak season. Many times, this can quickly result in a breakdown of communication. This breakdown is the cause of most of the major conflicts we experience.

Rather than give up or whine, we refocus and talk through the issue considering we are one team after all, and our goals are the same.

Q: What are your other interests and hobbies?

A: I’ve always enjoyed photography, and taking great photos is one of the crafts that I feel most fulfilled doing.

I have also been practicing kendo since 2015. Kendo is a Japanese martial art which focuses on self-development using the katana, a traditional Japanese sword. Although there have been kendo clubs in Manila since the 1970’s, it is only recently that Philippine kendo is experiencing a boom with clubs in both the Visayas and in Mindanao.

I am a member of the Cebu Kendo Club. Check us out on Facebook! The 2018 Kendo National Tournament will be hosted by Cebu this October and I extend an invitation to everyone to come and see. Shameless plug. 😉

Q: How does the practice of Kendo help you in becoming a better manager/person?

A: Kendo is physically and psychologically demanding. Your movement in kendo can serve as a mirror that reflects who you are as a person. If you are distracted, fearful, hesitant, arrogant, deceitful, or insincere, this physically manifests in training. It will show on how you stand, how you step, how you approach and attack, or how you react to being attacked.

Every single training session shows you your own flaws, and every single session you strive to overcome them. Every session is always an ego check for me. This idea that there are always things to improve and develop is important to me as manager and as a person.

Q: What are a few of your professional and personal goals?

A: I want to see more leadership roles and leaders rise up from my team. There is a wealth of potential within each member of my team, and I want to see them be able to grow and use that potential to the fullest.

Professionally, I still have a lot to learn about the business, but I am not in a hurry. Each lesson comes along in its own time.

Personally, I want to be a more effective communicator and a more disciplined person. Outside PhotoUp, kendo remains a high personal priority for me. As one of the senior member of the club, I would like to see it grow and have an impact on a national level.

Q: Has your experience working at PhotoUp helped you achieve your professional and personal goals?

A: It has and is still teaching me the importance of discipline and self-control. As someone in a leadership role, I should be a level-headed and calm decision maker. This is carrying over into life outside PhotoUp, and I am forever grateful to those around me who have the patience to put up with me while I work to improve myself.

Q: Any advice to people who want to hold a leadership position?

A: One, patience is key. Two, always approach everything with the mindset of trying to improve, whatever it is you are facing. Finally, don’t wait to be “ready.” Jump at every opportunity that presents itself, then learn along the way. Life is too short to be in a state of perpetual preparation.

Mike is not just a problem solver. He is a coach, a listener, and a friend. He definitely has the qualities of a compassionate, inspiring, exemplary leader. Which is why he is a massive asset to the PhotoUp Team.

Being offered a leadership position is a great honor. But being effective in such a position also requires a huge amount of responsibility. Not only are you required to know your tasks like the back of your hand, but you also need to establish a good rapport with your team.

Venus, a soft-spoken young lady, took the responsibility head-on. Let’s see what she has to say leading a team in PhotoUp.

Q: Tell us more about yourself.

A: Hi! My name is Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. I consider myself a happy and introspective person. I don’t mind talking for hours about life, stars, history, riddles, movies, and more.

Q: Can you explain your role at PhotoUp?

A: I started as an intern in 2015 and learned a lot about editing. Eventually, I became a junior editor of the Yellow Team. When my senior editor resigned, PhotoUp chose me to take the position. I felt inside that I was meant for something that is far beyond what I can imagine.

Now, I am the team manager of Group 3 in PhotoUp’s Graveyard Shift. Primarily, I manage batches of real estate photos and related statistical data. After my team finishes editing their assigned images, I ensure that they meet our high-quality standards before we send them off to our clients around the world. In addition, I manage my team members, motivating them to excel in their work.

Q: What are the difficulties that you face as a team leader?

A: Initiating and maintaining interpersonal relationships with team members is perhaps the most difficult task I need to do. As a team leader, I need to have a deeper connection with my team. Each person has his or her own identity, set of norms, belief, attitude, character, and personality. To be a good, compassionate, and understanding leader, I strive to know everyone on a personal level and not just as photo editors.

Q: How do you describe yourself as a leader?

A: Personally, leadership involves not just a series of actions but a process that you do for your team. I do my work similarly to how I lead my classmates in accomplishing a group project at school. I was at the forefront, actively participating in the collective effort and supporting them all the way.

In the same way, I prove to my team that I’m working diligently. I strive not just to instruct but to actually show them how it’s done. I want to be more of a role model than a supervisor.

Q: How do you keep your team on their feet during graveyard shift?

A: If you’re not used to staying awake in the wee hours of the morning, then working in the graveyard shift takes a lot of adjusting on your part. Luckily, most of our team members, including me, are nocturnal owls. Getting sleepy during the shift is inevitable, so I talk to my team members or offer them some candies and chocolates to keep them alert and awake.

The Ultimate All-in-One

Real Estate Photographer Business Platform

Grow a successful real estate photography business with PhotoUp.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

Q: Some of your team members said you keep mostly to yourself. How does being quiet help you in your work or personal life? How do you communicate with your team?

A: At work, I don’t talk all that much. Being quiet allows me to have enjoyed my own peace, which makes me more focused on my tasks. But I still devote time to communicate with others. I usually do this by sending Skype messages, emails, and batch notes.

Q: You love drawing. Can you tell us how drawing helps you both personally and professionally?

A: Drawing has always been my pastime and stress reliever. It helps me keep calm whenever I feel stressed. I feel extremely satisfied, accomplished, and happy whenever I finish an artwork. Drawing is also another way for me to connect with my co-workers because many people in graveyard shift are artists. Colored pencils are my usual media. Now, I’m experimenting on watercolor art.

Q: What are a few of your professional and personal goals?

A: I’ve always been shy. Professionally, I want to overcome my fears about talking in public. Also, since I have recently assumed a leadership role, I want to learn more about managing people. Personally, I want to become a well-known contemporary artist and show my work in exhibits.

Q: How has your experience working at PhotoUp helped you achieve your professional and personal goals?

A: I’ve been working here in PhotoUp for two years. I could hardly believe at just how much I’ve grown in this company. I started as an intern here last 2016 and subsequently assigned on the Yellow Team. It was here where, through consistent advice and support, I was able to sharpen my photo-editing skills.

To tell you the truth, I could never have imagined leading a team. But with the help of my supportive manager and colleagues, I am now in charge of a team of very successful people.

Q: Any advice to people who want to venture into the tech industry?

A: We are now in an age where technology is everywhere and fast-paced. You need to keep up, be updated of trends, and hone your skills to remain competitive. Explore and don’t be afraid to discover.

Q: What advice do you have for other women who want to move into management roles?

A: Being in a leadership position is a great responsibility, but gender is definitely not a qualification. Don’t feel inadequate to be in such role; women can do what men can do. Empower yourself by learning management skills. Take one step forward, and you’ll be surprised at the things you can accomplish.

Venus considers herself relatively new in this position, but she takes it with utmost grace and determination. That is truly inspiring! Well done and great work, Venus!

Since many of our team members are beachgoers, we held our party at The Planet Beach Resort, a cozy beach resort in the rustic town of Compostela.

Majority of the people came in their Hawaiian-inspired outfits, which matched the jovial mood of the day.

At 11 AM, Ossie, our office manager, gave the welcoming remarks. Within a few minutes, the PhotoUp Christmas party officially started. Jay-R, a college student from the University of Cebu, emceed the event. He was an exceptionally fun and engaging host.

Each team presented Emmy-award winning performances. Clarice of the Western VP sang a sweet rendition of “Para Lang Sa Iyo” (Only For You), a contemporary Filipino love song.

Throughout the party, we had raffle prizes. The winners took home blenders, electric fans, stoves, and more. But the truly fortunate ones got a washing machine, a personal refrigerator, and a brand-new LED TV! You lucky guys you!

The most awaited part of the party—any party, for that matter—finally came! Everyone enjoyed a buffet that was lined up with delicious traditional Filipino dishes that everyone loved. Suddenly, silence filled the venue, broken only chomping sounds and low murmurs.

At last, the plates were cleared although some guys and gents were seen heading back to the table several times. The party resumed with a jaw-dropping presentation of Junrich, representing the Graveyard shift. He mimicked the sound of DJ turntables, percussion instruments, and synthesizers using nothing more than his oral and vocal chords!

Another amazing presentation by Adrian of the AM Shift, singing a medley of popular songs. Many of our team members are talented singers!

The Ultimate All-in-One

Real Estate Photographer Business Platform

Grow a successful real estate photography business with PhotoUp.

Join PhotoUp Learn More

The PhotoUp PM presentation displayed a multitude of cool talents. A guitarist, a beatbox drummer, a singer, and a group of dancers performed a medley of Christmas song.

Carl had the entire group in guffaws as he performed a series of rather interesting and energetic dance moves.

No party is complete without games! Racing to pop balloons against one’s butt got people cheering and laughing their hearts out.

Bet we can fit 7 people in that box. It’s a battle of estimation and strategy between the ladies and gentlemen.

How many people do you think can lie down in that collapsed box without touching any part of their torso on the floor?

Kristian, Devon, and Dave (our CEO, CMO, and COO respectively) together with PhotoUp investors and board members prepared a nice video thanking us for all our hard work. They also gave us an overview of the company’s direction in 2018, which got us totally energized!

This video also shows you why “K-Pac” and “Dr. Higgs” are the coolest executives ever!

The party officially ended at around 4 PM, but for some, it wasn’t over. Some stayed for a drink or two while others donned on their snorkel masks and explored the tidal flats in front of resort.

By now, you would have known that we definitely have a happy team!

PhotoUp truly knows how to have a lot of fun the Yuletide Season! Our awesome party was a perfect capper to a productive, successful 2017. Now we’re stoked to face another exciting and challenging year!