Melinda Enfinger
A professional photographer may be the ideal choice for getting great listing photos, but we realize that not every one is going to spend the time or the money to have professional pictures made for every listing. That's no excuse for sideways bathroom pics or other crappy MLS photos and with the technology available on your smart phone, you can still take great pictures, panoramas, and even videos to market your listings online. _We've narrowed down the field to 7 of the most user-friendly apps with robust editing capabilities, ease of social sharing, as well as cost and availability for both iPhone/iPad and Android devices. _Vote for your faves, share your opinions, and add any great apps that you think were wrongly left off the list. ;-)
Easily my favorite of the bunch, but I'm probably a little biased because I already use Pixelmator on my Mac (and maybe a little because I don't love Photoshop) The Magic Eraser tool is so freakin' awesome you'll be looking for ways to use it more often. You'll love the repair tool, the simple to use interface, and the fact that when you select a tool, it sorta jumps right out at you on the menu, so it's a snap to tell that you have the one you want. At $29.99, it will scare some people away, but considering the cost of Photoshop and how well Pixelmator stands up to its snobby cousin, it's a steal AND a no-brainer.
VSCO Cam was developed by Visual Supply Company, best known for building a fantastic series of plugins for Lightroom that mimic classic film stocks. It should come as no surprise then that classic translates into "real", which is good news for agents who want to have great pictures, but don't want to completely misrepresent the property. The robust editing abilities make this a sure bet for everyone from beginners to seasoned phone-camer-ographers.
It brings to your mobile device the power and control of professional photo editing software, previously only available on the desktop. With the tap of a finger you can retouch, adjust perspective, re-edit, and more. Snapseed has been around a long time and its variety of filters, edit tools, and selective adjust tools like edge detection, which applies changes to objects within the perimeter. All of which is why it's a previous winner of Apple's App of the Year. Google’s Snapseed remains one of the most powerful mobile photo tools available and is the perfect way to tweak photos on the go, crop, brush, rotate and fix spots in your listing photos before you upload them to social media.
This is one free app that goes well beyond what most basic and intermediate photo apps typically provide and did I mention that it's** FREE??**
It does offer in-app purchases for expanded options, but in my opinion, the app itself does pretty much everything that most non-professional users will ever need to do. (Read: don't bother with the IAPs)
Made for pro-level image editing, but simple enough for daily use with its clean and easy to use interface. Perhaps my favorite feature is its ability to lend depth and character to images with tilt-shift. HDR technologies include Local Tone Balancing, Photo Alignment and Ghost Reduction that dramatically increase the accuracy and quality of photos at the fastest possible speeds.
Almost everything I read about Diptic mentioned how great it is for telling a story with your photos. If you want buyers to fall in love with your listing, it couldn't hurt to appeal to their emotions with a story in which they can see their future in the home. Diptic has tons of layouts, easily imports photos from your camera, Facebook, or Flickr, and exports in high-resolution. Oh yeah, you can also save your picstories to your device, email them, or share directly to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Google+.
This is a great for prepping photos for social media quickly on your phone. The "Fusion" filter tool allows you to create and reuse your own filters, which is great for agents to make short work of editing listing pics. (Since we all know that buyers want to see pictures, you should be taking advantage of every opportunity to showcase the homes you market.)
