Photo Manipulation – Where Do You Draw The Line?

These days photo manipulation is making the news all the time. Photo manipulation with Photoshop and other photo editors has become such an issue that Adobe and Cannon have teamed up to create a suite of tools that would allow a photo to be matched with the camera that shot it and detect if the photo has been manipulated.

As you would expect, this issue arises in real estate photography. In my last post here at Geekestate I pointed out that photo-editing is one of the keys to great property photos. With property photos there is always the temptation keep going and make the image better than “reality” by removing power lines, ugly power poles and all sorts of unsightly objects that clutter up the image. After all, those architectural renderings the builders use on new construction listings don’t have ugly, realistic details. What’s the difference?

The difference is that people can distinguish between drawings and photographs and photographs have the expectation of realism. And real estate license law says something about “…disclosing all material defects..”. So if you remove power lines you could probably be accused of not disclosing all material defects. I don’t want to start interpreting the legal aspects of all this. One of the better articles I’ve seen on this subject is by John Edwards called, “Have you crossed the line?”

In discussing this with Realtors and real estate photographers it’s easy to agree that you should NOT modify any permanent feature of the property, like power lines, power poles etc. and it is OK to remove garbage cans, cars in the driveway and clutter on the refrigerator. However, it’s more difficult to agree on whether or not is OK to modify such features as the grass. The photo above in which I modified the grass. After talking to many people on this subject it appears that grass and landscaping is kind of a borderline area. Some consider it permanent and some don’t. I think there is enough disagreement on this particular area that I’m going to treat it as permanent in the future.