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Image banner for the February 2024 PFRE Photographer of the Month Winner Art Ibewuike, with a featured image of his winning photo titled "Living Room or Family Room""

Congratulations to Art Ibewuike, February 2024 PFRE Photographer of the Month! The theme this month was "Living Room or Family Room". Art Ibewuike - #895 Paul-Dan Dragoman - #898 Peter Wingfield - #900 Here's what Art has to say: Thank you so much for ...

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Photoshop vs a Virtual Staging Service: Which Is Better?

Published: 23/05/2022

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Many real estate photographers may initially try to do their own virtual staging in Photoshop, believing that’s the most cost-efficient solution. However, often they get stuck in the editing process for hours or days, not being able to make the images look realistic with the right perspective and furniture proportions. 

In this post, we’ll compare Photoshop vs using a professional virtual staging service to help you decide which is the best option for you when virtually staging your real estate photography. Before I dig deeper into my Photoshop vs virtual staging services comparison, let’s first take a look at why you should use virtual staging in real estate.

Why Use Virtual Staging in Real Estate?

With virtual staging, agents and sellers have the option to showcase beautiful photos of their property without ever having to leave their homes. Hence, why this relatively new technology exploded right after the pandemic struck me. 

Editing images an Apple product

Enhancing listing photos with virtual staging ensures that buyers take notice. It makes a space stand out and can transform it into an inviting home that potential homebuyers can imagine themselves living in.

Additionally, the process is also easy for the seller and provides them with the tools they need to sell their home fast. They can also use virtual staging to renovate outdated spaces, as well as declutter and depersonalize homes.

These are all essential aspects for showcasing a home’s potential and selling it faster and at a higher price.

Also, regular home staging is becoming more and more expensive and can eat up your budget really fast. On the other hand, virtual staging can reduce the cost of staging by up to 97%.

Photoshop vs a Virtual Staging Service

Now that you know why you should use virtual staging in real estate, let’s take a look at some important factors to consider when using either Photoshop or a virtual staging service.

Proportion and Perspective 

One of the most important aspects of real estate photography is accurate proportions. You need to find a good balance between the horizon and perspective.

And in 2D such as Photoshop, you can’t adjust the horizon line, meaning that you’ll need to choose pictures of furniture taken from an angle that corresponds with the original photo. Otherwise, your virtually staged photos won’t look realistic and the viewer will notice that the images are fake.

With a professional virtual staging service, like PhotoUp, the photo editors are using CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software that can easily correct the horizon line and recreate the room in 3D to make it realistic and proportional.

In other words, all furniture and decor in the room will inherit the right perspective and proportions that Photoshop just can’t recreate.

Light and Shadows

The issue with Photoshop is that it is a 2D software, which doesn’t have any light settings. So, in order to try and make the virtual staging come out realistic, you’ll have to draw shadows and highlights on your own.

This doesn’t only take time, but also requires advanced Photoshop skills, as well as a good eye for details and artistry.

But when using a virtual staging service, the designers use special software that can quickly adjust the light, and calculate and cast natural shadows, saving you tons of valuable time you can spend on shooting more properties.

Using Photoshop in a Macbook Pro

They can even create Twilight virtual staging to add a beautiful sunset to your real estate photos or enhance the landscape with a green lawn or an inviting patio area. 

There’s so much more you can do using virtual staging software that just can’t be accomplished in Photoshop, at least not on a super-photorealistic level.

The Time Aspect

As previously mentioned, it takes a lot of time trying to digitally stage real estate photos in Photoshop.

For one, it can take several days to find suitable furniture and decor to get the proportions and horizon right. And not to mention fixing textures and achieving realistic lights and shadows, which is harder than removing them and labor-intensive work that may still result in unrealistic-looking images.

But when using a virtual staging service, all you need to do is upload your real estate photography, choose your desired design style, furniture, and decor, and get beautifully staged images returned to you in 48 hours or less.

For more details, have a look at the quick virtual staging uploader video tutorial:

Photoup Virtual Staging Uploader Tutorial

As simple as that!

Lost Revenue

Even though Photoshop is a popular tool for real estate photo editing, it’s not the most cost-effective solution when it comes to virtual staging since time is money!

With its limited capacities, it takes much longer to virtually stage images, and will often result in low-quality, unrealistic results. Photoshop is a graphic editor that works best for post-processing, color correction, and clipping.

All the time spent on editing your images in Photoshop could be spent out in the field shooting more homes and building lasting relationships with clients instead. And being able to shoot more properties and get more clients means more revenue for your real estate photography business.

Conclusion

A virtual staging service with the proper software at hand is able to create captivating virtually staged images that look absolutely photorealistic. Since 97% of home searches start online, it’s crucial to create stunning real estate photography to market your listing.

Not only do beautifully staged images help to capture buyers’ attention but they also help them imagine themselves living in the home. All things considered, this may help to accelerate the sale and to sell your listing for top dollar.

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