Listings Management System Manual
Preparing Photos Using Photoshop

Before you can post your listings, you will need to resize your real estate listings photos and optimize them for Website use. Getting them the correct size will make your listings look uniform and professional. Optimizing the photos for the web will make them upload quickly for you and download quickly for your prospective buyers. Below are instructions to resize and optimize photos.

 

Using Photoshop to Resize and Optimize Photos
(Estimated time to resize and optimize four
photos once the steps are learned: 5 minutes.)

Step 1: Opening Photoshop. Find and double click on the Photoshop shortcut on your desktop or in the Start menu.

Step 2: Opening an image. You need to open an image you will be using on your site's listing. In Photoshop go to File, then click on "Open" (Example A below). The "Open" box will appear (Example B below). Find the image that you want and double click on it.


Example A
Example B

The image will open in Photoshop (Example C).

Example C

Step 3: Resizing the image. Most digital cameras default settings are to take photos that are 1,280 pixels across or greater, so all photos will need to be resized to 450 pixels across.

Go to "Image" and click on "Image Size" (Example D). The "Image Size" box will open (Example E). If the image width is greater than 450 pixels (like Example E at 1280), then change that number to 450. If it is smaller than 450 pixels, then click on "Cancel" and skip down to Step 4.


Example D
Example E

Click the "OK" button and your image will resize (Example F). Note: The photo may look quite small in Photoshop. That is because Photoshop doesn't always view the photo at 100%, but merely shows it in a smaller version. Don't worry, if the photo is set to 450 pixels across, it will be perfect and look just like the large photo.

Example F

Step 4: Saving the photo for the web. Go to "File" and click on "Save for Web" (Example G). The "Save for Web" box will open (See Example H). There are two settings you have to change here, but the next time you open Photoshop, they will already be the default settings. One, you need to click on the "Optimized" tab at the top (see red circle in Example H). Two, you need to select "JPEG Medium" from the dropdown box (see blue circle in Example H). Now click on the "OK" button.

Example G
Example H

The "Save" box will pop up (see Example I). Make sure the "Save as Type" dropdown box is on "Images Only." Once you set it this way the first time, it will remain that way every time you open Photoshop.

In this example, you can also see the image still has the old name that it was given from the camera, P6050002.jpg. I would name this resized and optimized version something different and relevant, like seadancer-front-view.jpg (ALWAYS lower case) and save it somewhere in a "seadancer" folder, since you can use a lot of these photos over and over as listings rotate.

Example I

Example J


As soon as you push the "Save" button, the "Save for Web" box will disappear. You can then close the old photo, in this case it is called P6050002.jpg. It will ask you if you want to "Save Changes" to this original photo. Choose "No" since you may need that original photo for a high resolution brochure.

You are finished. Repeat for as many photos as you want to put up on the web. Note that each listing can have up to 12 photos, but can have any number from 0-12. You can also open all the photos for one listing at once and do this process faster if that is not confusing.