12 Best Photo Editing Software for Photographers (2023 Guide)
Over the years of shooting real estate images, we've seen how improper software makes photos appear dull or distorted. Failing to highlight a home's best features leads to missed sales opportunities. We’re listing options for the best photo editing software for real estate photography, whether you're a pro or a beginner.
Table of Contents
Best Photo Editing Software for Real Estate Photography
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and Luminar NEO are the best software solutions for real estate photo editing because of their powerful editing capabilities, advanced tools, and ability to streamline batch editing of large sets of listing photos. Particularly when working on the RAW file format, you can work on multiple images to streamline your editing workflow.
Post-processing is an integral part of a digital photographer’s “process", whether you're a professional or merely a hobbyist. This is where you edit your photos to balance hues, create special effects, improve saturation, remove blemishes, and more. These image enhancements and alterations can be done using special photo editing software.
With these criteria, we’ve come up with a list of advanced photo editing tools that any skilled real estate photographer can use.
- It should allow you to share your photos
- It should enable you to perform the necessary adjustments
- It should have an adequate selection of filters and effects
- It should be able to import and organize your photos
1. Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the premier photo editing software used by real estate professionals for its unparalleled selection of enhancement tools. Key real estate photography editing features like healing brushes, cloning, and content-aware fill allow editors to remove distracting objects from room photos.
Photoshop is perfect for an intermediate or professional photographer. The array of adjustments for exposure, color balance, and sharpening gives precise control over image qualities. Layers, masks, and blend modes facilitate complex edits and compositing. Photoshop is essential to helping you edit photos to the next level.
- Pros: Multiple tools, industry standard, vast resources/community
- Cons: Expensive at first, steep learning curve
2. Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is a powerful photo editing tool that has become the standard for professionals and novice photographers alike. With it, you can adjust the color, exposure, and tonality of a digital image. However, it is limited and not as powerful as Photoshop in terms of image manipulation — changing colors, removing spots, or compositing it with other images.
Aside from an HDR batch plugin, it provides an optimized workflow for real estate photographers with streamlined batch editing capabilities. We often use the Develop tools that offer one-click presets and manual adjustments to straighten, balance, and enhance large sets of property photos. Lightroom Classic is my go-to software when bulk-editing real estate photos.
- Pros: Workflow-focused, built-in RAW processing, presets
- Cons: Limited photo manipulation capabilities compared to Photoshop
3. Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo stands out in editing real estate photography shots because of its artificial intelligence-powered tools. It can make batch edits and enhance large sets of real estate photos quickly and easily. Editing features like AI Sky Replacement, AI Structure, and AI Accent AI instantly improve skies, surfaces, and details in properties.
We use it to edit real estate photos because of its ability to uniformly process listing photos in bulk while still providing customizable image enhancements. This feature enables professional real estate photographers to turn around high-quality, consistent galleries that make spaces shine. Luminar Neo delivers professional results in a fraction of the editing time.
- Pros: Quick AI-powered edits and enhancements, affordable
- Cons: More limited control than Photoshop/Lightroom
4. Corel PaintShop Pro
Corel PaintShop Pro is a favorite of both professionals and novices because its real estate photo editing tools and functions are easy to use. One of its capabilities is the ability to correct perspectives and change color gradients, color levels, white balance, and more. It also utilizes GPS image data for geo-tagging.
The combination of automated real estate image enhancements and precise manual controls helps real estate photographers refine their photos efficiently. While not as full-featured as Photoshop, Paintshop Pro's lower cost and solid performance make it appealing as a strong real estate photo editing software.
- Pros: Affordable, good selection of tools
- Cons: Lesser known, not as polished as Adobe options
5. GIMP
Do you think you need Adobe Photoshop? Here is a real estate photography software program that can do about 80% of what Photoshop can do. GIMP is a bitmap-based image manipulation program that is ideal for quick and simple real estate photo editing.
However, its user interface is not that polished compared to other applications. On the plus side, it's an open-source program, so it's free to use. You can also use free scripts and plugins to enhance its capabilities.
- Pros: Free and open source, available on every platform
- Cons: Steep learning curve, lacking some features
6. ON1 Photo RAW
ON1 Photo RAW provides filters and presets that give stunning photos heightened styling with just one click. The Enhance AI tools automatically adjust lighting, color, and detail in real estate photography. Stacking layers enables applying custom edits to specific elements like skies or buildings.
Photo RAW also includes panorama stitching ideal for real estate photos, focus stacking, and portrait retouching tools useful for property listings. The streamlined user interface and seamless experience from import to export make ON1 Photo RAW a worthy Lightroom alternative for many real estate photo editing tasks at an affordable price point.
- Pros: Robust tools, affordable subscription or one-time purchase
- Cons: Slower than Lightroom, fewer tutorials/resources
7. Serif PhotoPlus
Serif PhotoPlus focuses more on graphic design and creative projects than professional photo editing. It offers drawing tools, frames, templates, and effects that real estate photographers can use to embellish their photos for marketing. The collage creator and text options enable you to design property lineups tailored to social media.
For basic one-off real estate photography improvements to brightness, color, and image cropping, PhotoPlus gets the job done. However, it lacks the workflow efficiencies and adjustment controls for batch post-processing large real estate photo sets. Despite that, we find this editing software quite unique because it also makes it easy to restore old scanned photos.
- Pros: Inexpensive, good for beginners
- Cons: Very limited capabilities compared to leading options
8. PicMonkey
PicMonkey is an easy-to-use online graphic design and real estate photo editing software. It offers templates, touchup tools, graphics, and collage creation for basic photo enhancements. The basic photo editor is free, while the pro subscription unlocks more advanced capabilities.
When editing real estate photography shots, PicMonkey can help create branded image collages and slideshows to showcase listings on social media and websites. The templates enable quick formatting of images to style and size specifications. While it lacks the advanced editing power of Photoshop, PicMonkey provides an accessible option for simple real estate photo editing online.
- Pros: Free basic version, easy online editing, automatic sizing for social media
- Cons: Must pay to access more advanced features, more basic tools compared to others
9. Photomatix Pro
Photomatix Pro specializes in HDR photo processing. It merges bracketed exposure shots into a single HDR image and includes tone mapping options to compress the expanded luminance range for display. This produces vivid HDR images that capture interior and exterior details not visible in a single exposure.
When you're serious about editing real estate photography, you can take advantage of its automatic creation of HDR images and exposure fusion for batch processing multiple listing photos. It also adjusts alignment and ghosting artifacts. For professional photographers utilizing HDR, Photomatix Pro provides a streamlined workflow and quality results unattainable in other editing software.
- Pros: Specialized HDR merging and tone mapping
- Cons: Limited to HDR, not a full editing suite
10. Canva
Canva offers free graphic design tools and templates for editing real estate photos quickly and simply. This real estate photo editing software saves me crucial time with the help of its drag-and-drop interface to apply backgrounds, frames, graphics, and text elements that add polish and branding to listing images and marketing materials.
While Canva lacks robust photo retouching capabilities, its focus on templates, fonts, and quick design allows real estate professionals to do real estate image editing for social media content, flyers, ads, emails, and more with a cohesive look applied to their property photos. The library of layouts and styles provides consistent creative direction without design expertise.
- Pros: Free version available, easy-to-use templates, drag-and-drop editor
- Cons: Very basic editor, not for serious photo enhancements
11. Darktable
Darktable is an open-source photo workflow application with non-destructive image editing capabilities. This editing software natively supports RAW photo development, enabling global and local adjustments to real estate images. We like Darktable's tools to correct perspective and lens distortions, reduce noise, and enhance interior lighting to showcase house details.
The workflow design provides real estate photographers with precise control over batch-developing large sets of property listing photos while ensuring a consistent style. While the learning curve is steeper than commercial solutions, Darktable offers free professional-grade photo editing. With mastery, it can fulfill demanding real estate photo editing needs.
- Pros: Free open-source option with non-destructive edits
- Cons: Steep learning curve, no photo organization features
12. Capture One
Capture One provides exceptional RAW processing and image editing tools tailored for studio, commercial, and professional photographers. It delivers meticulous color, lens, and perspective corrections ideal for property listings. Batch edits allow you to work on multiple images using the same settings and presets.
The layer-based real estate photography editing workflow lets you apply localized adjustments with ease. With robust lighting and white balance controls, Capture One can master interior details and exterior ambient light. The cost may deter beginners, although Capture One offers pro-grade real estate photo editing capabilities on par with Adobe Lightroom.
- Pros: Excellent RAW processing and tethering
- Cons: More specialized functionality, expensive
Basic Real Estate Photo Editing Software Alternatives
The mentioned list features top-notch real estate photography software equipped with unique functionalities to enhance editing efficiency significantly. Alternatively, if you prefer standard editing tools, there are additional AI-powered photo editor options suitable for a real estate photographer.
- Radiant Photo: Radiant Photo is an AI photo editor that utilizes neural networks to power one-click fixes for adjusting brightness, color balance, clarity, and other attributes to improve multiple photos.
- Topaz Photo AI: The Topaz Photo AI software leverages AI to remove unwanted objects and wires from photos and replace skies and blemish removal with a single click, helping real estate photographers edit faster.
Ultimate Culling App for Real Estate Photo Editing
Many real estate photo editing programs lack built-in AI to cull large photo sets automatically. A useful photo editing app for real estate called Aftershoot utilizes artificial intelligence to sort through duplicate and poor-quality shots quickly.
This culling tool simplifies the selection process, so you can export only the best images to complete editing in your chosen real estate photo editing software.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do I Edit Real Estate Photography Photos?
Real estate photos are best edited using software like Photoshop, Lightroom, or Luminar, which allow batch edits, lens correction, cropping, exposure adjustments, color correction, straightening lines, cloning out distractions, and enhancing room detail and lighting. Some clients may also request virtual staging and floor plan enhancements.
What App Do Realtors Use for Pictures?
Many realtors use editing apps like Adobe Lightroom and Canva on mobile or full programs like Photoshop and Luminar on the desktop to refine real estate photos before listing properties online.
What Is the Best Format for Real Estate Photos?
RAW and JPEG are the best file formats for editing real estate photos because they provide sufficient image data, although JPEG can't keep file sizes small for quick loading. For excellent image quality, JPEG and PNG are the best image formats for listing and marketing uploads.
What Do Real Estate Photographers Use to Edit Photos?
Real estate photographers typically use software like Lightroom, Photoshop, and Luminar to edit large batches of property photos. These advanced editing tools adjust exposure, lighting, colors, straighten lines, remove distractions, and enhance room details.
How Long Should It Take to Edit Real Estate Photos?
Editing a high-quality real estate photo from the RAW file to the finished image should take five to 10 minutes on average. With batch edits, an experienced real estate editor can enhance large sets of 30 to 50 photos per property in a few hours.
The Bottom Line
In the end, real estate photographers would be well-served investing in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Luminar NEO. Their extensive editing features, workflow efficiencies, and popularity amongst professionals make them the premier choices for producing high-quality real estate imagery.
Do you want to scale your real estate photography business, increase sales, and free up your evenings for family and friends? Outsource your photo and video editing to PhotoAndVideoEdits.com.
Suggested Quick Links:
- How to Find the Best Real Estate Photo Editing Companies
- 8 Practical Tips for Growing Your Photography Business
- 9 Exterior Real Estate Photography Tips
- Real Estate Photo Editing
- Knowledge Base
