Real estate photo editing checklist

Edit listing photos in this order: cull, straighten, set exposure and windows, fix white balance, remove small distractions, stage if needed, then label and compare each edit with its original. Only adjust what you shot, such as light, color, angle and crop. Anything you add or remove needs a label, and nothing about the house itself should change.

This is the list I run on every listing. It works in any editor, whether that's Lightroom, the iPhone Photos app or an app built for listings like ours.

The checklist

Which edits are allowed on listing photos?

California wrote the clearest line into law. AB 723 says an image is not "digitally altered" when "only lighting, sharpening, white balance, color correction, angle, straightening, cropping, exposure, or other common photo editing adjustments are made that do not change the representation of the real property." Steps 1 to 7 on the list sit inside that. Steps 8 and 9 don't, which is why they carry a label.

Some edits are banned outright, labeled or not. Stellar MLS prohibits changing permanent fixtures, adding views or lighting that don't exist, removing "negative visual elements" such as holes in the wall or damaged flooring, and distorting a room's dimensions. CRMLS bans changing wall color, flooring, cabinets and landscaping. Don't edit the house.

Steps 1 to 3: cull, straighten, crop

Cull first, before you edit a single frame. Pick the best shot of each angle and delete the rest. It's faster to edit 25 photos than 80, and how many listing photos you need covers the target count.

Straighten next, because every later step looks different once the frame is square. Leaning walls are a common giveaway of an amateur shoot. On iPhone, the Photos app has straighten and vertical tilt controls under Crop. Fixing vertical lines goes step by step.

Crop out slivers of furniture at the edges and trim excess ceiling. Keep photos horizontal. Zillow's photography tips note that horizontal is the orientation the MLS and listing sites use.

Steps 4 to 7: light and color

Exposure. Brighten until the room feels like it does with every light on at midday. Lift shadows before you push overall brightness, or the windows blow out further. In Snapseed, Tune Image lets you lift shadows and pull highlights separately from overall brightness.

Windows. Pull highlights down until you can see some of the outside. That's an exposure fix, not an alteration. Pasting in a different view is an alteration, and boards like Stellar ban it. Fixing dark photos and blown-out windows covers both problems.

White balance. Mixed daylight and warm bulbs turn white walls orange in one corner and blue in another. Set white balance on a white wall or ceiling, then match the rest of the set to it.

Color. Go easy. Saturated green grass and orange wood are what reads as over-edited. If it looks better than the house does in person, pull it back.

Steps 8 to 10: removals, staging and the check

Small distractions like a cord, a trash can or a toothbrush can be erased on most phones. That's an alteration under AB 723, so mark the photo for a label. Better yet, move the thing and reshoot. Decluttering listing photos covers the options and the rules.

Staging is for empty rooms only, with furniture sized to the room. See which rooms to stage.

Then check every edit against its original. Open both side by side and look at windows, doors, the floor, the fireplace and the ceiling line. AI tools, ours included, can move a window or reshape a mantel while doing something else. California's Department of Real Estate says failing to review AI-generated images "may result in violations even if the alteration was unintentional."

Steps 11 and 12: the final pass

Consistency. Scroll the whole set as thumbnails. One room noticeably warmer, brighter or more saturated than the others stands out and looks edited. Match it to the rest.

Labels. Every staged, decluttered or otherwise altered photo gets a label where your MLS wants it, and the original goes beside it where the board allows. In California, add the statement and link to the original. Our disclosure wording guide has text to paste.

No text on the image unless your board requires a disclosure there. Realcomp, for example, bans watermarks, words, frames and special effects on listing photos, apart from its own watermark.

Order and export. Cover photo first, then the order a buyer would walk through the house. For portal file sizes, see Zillow listing photo requirements.

Doing the whole checklist on a phone

Real Estate Camera is our app, and it's built around this list. Enhance handles steps 2, 4, 5 and 6 in one pass for 1 credit: verticals, exposure, window detail and white balance. Declutter (2 credits) covers step 8 for a busy room, and staging (2 credits) covers step 9. Staged results come labeled, and the original stays beside each edit. Steps 1, 10, 11 and 12 are still on you. Credits come in one-time packs, and editing a listing on your phone walks through one listing start to finish.

For how Enhance handles several of these steps, see AI real estate photo editing.

Run steps 2 to 6 on your next listing in one tap. Start free: 1 credit.