Overcast Real Estate Photos

[davisdeaton]

Hi!

I just started dabbling into aerial real estate photography for a neighbor. I don't have any training with this, so everything I'm doing is an experiment right now.

Unfortunately, the weather around here has been consistently overcast or far too windy to send a drone up, with no break for good lighting. They're pressed for time to get pictures of their house to put it on the market, so I was forced to do a shoot yesterday with very poor lighting.

I wondered if any of y'all have tips on making real estate photography "pop," even with poor lighting? It truly is a beautiful area, and I know these pictures would look a lot better on a sunny day.

The best way I can think to share these images is through a link to my website where I have them posted (there are a lot right now - I haven't narrowed them down yet).

Please let me know what you think could be done/done better to help bring these images to their full potential!

https://www.davisdeatonphotography.com/132-diamond-a-ranch-road

Above is a link to my attempt at editing the photos.

Below is a link to the RAW photos.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1w517x2Y6AMQA3azVASQQwaNUere-JvpF?usp=sharing

Thanks for any and all suggestions!

Davis





Some Uploaded Photos:

 

[CAcreeks]

Here's a semi-standard DxO raw conversion, downsampled 50% for faster uploading. It would be nice to have more sky so the horizon could be straightened, and still have room for a nice sky replacement. Photoshop might help with content-aware fill.


EV +.5 then normal stuff

 

[Ho72]

Semi quick and dirty with Capture One, resized in Photoshop. There are some halos, etc. I would have fixed if the food weren't hot and the beer cold.

 

[Lan]

Here's my quick and dirty PS version, less than five minutes work.

Sky replaced, using the Sky Replacement filter.

Camera Raw filter to increase contrast and warmth/tint.

Topaz Denoise AI to reduce noise.

A quick use of the burn tool.

I may come back and post a full version using DxO to process the raw version. This is just a quick and dirty JPEG hack based on the image below it:


Quick edit

I wondered if any of y'all have tips on making real estate photography "pop," even with poor lighting? It truly is a beautiful area, and I know these pictures would look a lot better on a sunny day.

The best way I can think to share these images is through a link to my website where I have them posted (there are a lot right now - I haven't narrowed them down yet).

Please let me know what you think could be done/done better to help bring these images to their full potential!



Some Uploaded Photos:

 

[CAcreeks]

Semi quick and dirty with Capture One, resized in Photoshop. There are some halos, etc. I would have fixed if the food weren't hot and the beer cold.

Didn't even recognize that photo from the DNG! FastRawViewer is needed. DxO converson follows. I could have boosted the lighting, but it looks fine to me without direct sun.

 

[Babine]

Photoshop ACR should allow for any changes that you would prefer on a duplicate layer.

I started there with this one and used the sliders to effect the contrast and open the shadows a bit; in PS, added in the new sky, used masked curves adjustments to fine tune and selectively sharpened in darken mode.









--
Cheers.
Gary

http://forums.dpreview.com/Galleries/8298604696/photos

Just once, I want a username and password prompt to say: "close enough".

 

[Ho72]

Didn't even recognize that photo from the DNG! FastRawViewer is needed. DxO converson follows. I could have boosted the lighting, but it looks fine to me without direct sun.

I like your version better. I still might lighten the darkest greens of the house a bit.

 

[davisdeaton]

I would have fixed if the food weren't hot and the beer cold.

Haha, thank you! These look great!

 

[davisdeaton]

Semi quick and dirty with Capture One, resized in Photoshop. There are some halos, etc. I would have fixed if the food weren't hot and the beer cold.

Didn't even recognize that photo from the DNG! FastRawViewer is needed. DxO converson follows. I could have boosted the lighting, but it looks fine to me without direct sun.

Thanks for your take on it! I've actually never heard of FastRawViewer.. Might need to do some research.

Update: Just did some searching on FastRawViewer. I had no idea software like that existed! Might be worth the investment!

 

[CAcreeks]

I like your version better. I still might lighten the darkest greens of the house a bit.

Thanks.

I gotta get a drone! Can they be recharged with a portable solar panel?

 

[davisdeaton]

Here's my quick and dirty PS version, less than five minutes work.

Sky replaced, using the Sky Replacement filter.

Camera Raw filter to increase contrast and warmth/tint.

Topaz Denoise AI to reduce noise.

A quick use of the burn tool.

I may come back and post a full version using DxO to process the raw version. This is just a quick and dirty JPEG hack based on the image below it:


Quick edit

I wondered if any of y'all have tips on making real estate photography "pop," even with poor lighting? It truly is a beautiful area, and I know these pictures would look a lot better on a sunny day.

The best way I can think to share these images is through a link to my website where I have them posted (there are a lot right now - I haven't narrowed them down yet).

Please let me know what you think could be done/done better to help bring these images to their full potential!

Some Uploaded Photos:

This looks great - especially considering it took less than 5 minutes! Sky replacement makes a huge difference.

 

[davisdeaton]

I like your version better. I still might lighten the darkest greens of the house a bit.

Thanks.

I gotta get a drone! Can they be recharged with a portable solar panel?

I didn't make the original comment but I did make the original post! As for putting a solar panel on the back of a drone and letting it fly infinitely, I don't think so I'm a part of a lot of DJI user groups on various social media pages, and I've never come across anyone who's found a solar panel portable and powerful enough to charge a drone - though I could definitely be mistaken. I know my Mavic takes quite a hefty charger for its batteries.

As for getting a drone - it was the best investment I've ever made! So many incredible opportunities have come from it. Do it and don't look back!

 

[davisdeaton]

Photoshop ACR should allow for any changes that you would prefer on a duplicate layer.

I started there with this one and used the sliders to effect the contrast and open the shadows a bit; in PS, added in the new sky, used masked curves adjustments to fine tune and selectively sharpened in darken mode.

These are all great, but yours might be the best I've seen on here! Thank you so much for the tips! Yours looks fantastic.

 

[CAcreeks]

I like your version better. I still might lighten the darkest greens of the house a bit.

Thanks.

I gotta get a drone! Can they be recharged with a portable solar panel?

I didn't make the original comment but I did make the original post! As for putting a solar panel on the back of a drone and letting it fly infinitely, I don't think so I'm a part of a lot of DJI user groups on various social media pages, and I've never come across anyone who's found a solar panel portable and powerful enough to charge a drone - though I could definitely be mistaken. I know my Mavic takes quite a hefty charger for its batteries.

As for getting a drone - it was the best investment I've ever made! So many incredible opportunities have come from it. Do it and don't look back!

Thanks for the info, Davis (hope I interpreted your name correctly).

Drones would be excellent for recording a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon, but there is no electricity down there. Solar panels can recharge a phone or a camera, but perhaps I should wait for drone batteries to improve.

Ho72's Capture One rendition has its nice points. I like the higher mid-tone contrast, and especially the ominous gray cloud on upper right. By default, DxO produces more-cyan less-blue sky. At 100% actual pixels, the Adobe renditions have weird wormy textures.

Although Babine's ACR conversion has beautiful misty mountains. How was that done?

 

[Pixel Poetry]

I prefer an overcast day, it's better than having harsh contrast on a sunny day.

Looks to me like the problem is under exposed pictures.







--
PX

 

[davisdeaton]

I prefer an overcast day, it's better than having harsh contrast on a sunny day.

Looks to me like the problem is under exposed pictures.

Your work never ceases to amaze me. Thank you so much!



I typically try to underexpose my pictures to get more definition in the sky and highlights, but I probably did underexpose a bit too much in these.

 

[CAcreeks]

I prefer an overcast day, it's better than having harsh contrast on a sunny day.

Looks to me like the problem is under exposed pictures.

Nice sky replacement, Butters!

Your work never ceases to amaze me. Thank you so much!

I typically try to underexpose my pictures to get more definition in the sky and highlights, but I probably did underexpose a bit too much in these.

Oddly (for a lightweight drone camera) shadows are totally recoverable at -.33 EV. The principal problem for me was the DNG images you posted were not cullable. That's why we should buy FastRawViewer. Most camera manufacturers include a JPEG preview in their Raw format. Really helps for culling. Does DNG allow that?

 

[jonby]

Here's another one.

The basics are pretty similar to your original version (which I think is a pretty decent 'straight' interpretation, BTW) - mainly done in ACR. The colour in the original is a bit dominated by greens, yellows and oranges, so anything you can do to emphasize or introduce other colours will help to give it a more attractive and balanced feel. Try saturating colours other than green, yellow, orange a bit more than those colours. I also did some subtle colour grading in ACR - added a bit of blue/cyan in the shadows and orange warmth in the highlights, which I think helps a bit.

In PS, I added a bit of (very) wide radius sharpening, which essentially increases local contrast and saturation ('pop'). It's similar to clarity in ACR, but clarity only increases luminance contrast, whereas the sharpening increases colour saturation locally. Large radius (100px), small amount (14). This darkened the shadows underneath the roof and walkway overhangs, so I lightened these a bit.

I think replacing the sky is probably the most important thing that needs doing, as the original is just a little oppressive, and expanding the colour palette into the blues makes it feel more balanced as a picture (although also more false!). I just did a basic job - just a gradient fill with some noise added to avoid banding. Finding an appropriate real sky would be better, or using a dedicated sky replacement filter. Masking could be a bit better also - just a quick job.

Thanks for this 'project'. Working on other people's stuff is really good practice and it's interesting to see all the different approaches. Hope it ends up being beneficial for you.




Real estate attempt

 

[Ho72]

I took one for a spin through DxO/Nik and came up with this:



I prefer C1's highlight/shadow recovery 90% of the time but I think this is better than my previous attempt with C1. At any rate, I think the results posted by everyone here show that your shots are eminently usable.

 

[AKoblentz]

You may try Drone Real Estate HDR LUTs (just google) without Sky replacement