Best Photoshop Presets for Real Estate Photography: A Comprehensive Guide

In real estate photography, stunning, high-quality images are absolutely key to catching the eye of potential buyers and renters. But let's face it, getting those polished shots can be a real time-sink, especially when every single frame needs tweaks for exposure, color balance, and lens corrections.

That's where presets come in. These handy little groups of saved adjustments help you speed up the whole process without cutting corners on quality. As our editing pro Raffael Jacobs shows in his helpful YouTube tutorials, you can actually use Photoshop's own built-in features to quickly dial in the perfect color, tone, and geometry, no need for Lightroom or extra plugins.

This guide is here to break down Raffael's expert advice from his videos and articles, walking you through how to create and use your own presets for both interior and exterior property photos. It's all about working smarter, not harder.

With an optimized preset, the dark shadows in the corner of this image can be fixed

Why Use Presets?

Using presets speeds up delivery while ensuring consistent quality across high‑volume projects. A 2025 guide from Photo & Video Edits notes that time and quality are everything in real‑estate photography and that the right Photoshop plugins enhance image quality while accelerating workflow. Presets bundle exposure corrections, color adjustments and lens corrections so you can apply them to multiple images with a single click. They serve as starting points; you still need to fine‑tune each image based on lighting and composition.

Photoshop Presets vs. Lightroom Presets

Lightroom presets are popular because they work directly on RAW files and can be batch-processed. However, Photoshop can achieve similar automation through Actions.

A Photoshop Action is a recorded sequence of edits, exposure, highlights, perspective, masks, plugins, etc. Once saved, you can apply it to any photo or run it as a batch on an entire folder.

Unlike Lightroom presets, Photoshop actions can also include:

• Layer masks

• Geometry and perspective fixes

• Plugin calls

• Blending and luminosity steps

This makes Photoshop actions ideal for workflows that involve blending exposures — such as combining flash + ambient layers (flambient).

If you prefer Lightroom, you can still build presets that give your images a great baseline, such as exterior presets for under- or over-exposed scenes and interior presets after blending.

Core Adjustments for Real-Estate Presets

Effective presets control exposure, color and perspective.Here are common baseline settings many real-estate editors include when building presets:

Under-Exposed Exterior – Suggested Baseline

Used when the sky is properly exposed but the house is slightly dark.

• Exposure: +0.75

• Highlights: –25

• Shadows: +50

• Whites: +10

• Blacks: –20

• Clarity: +15

• Vibrance: +5

• Saturation: +5

• Tone Curve Light: +5

• Enable:

  • Lens profile corrections

  • Remove chromatic aberration

  • Vertical correction
    

Over-Exposed Exterior – Suggested Baseline

When images are slightly bright and lack contrast:

• Exposure: 0

• Contrast: +6

• Highlights: –35

• Shadows: +45

• Whites: +10

• Blacks: –20

• Clarity: +15

• Vibrance: +4

• Saturation: +5

Apply lens corrections and tone-curve adjustments similar to under-exposed scenes.

Interior Blend Preset – Suggested Baseline

After blending ambient + flash layers:

• Exposure: +0.10

• Contrast: +15

• Highlights: –90

• Shadows: +80

• Whites: +25

• Blacks: –45

• Clarity: +20

• Tone Curve:

  • Lights: +5

  • Blacks: –3

• Saturation: 0

• Vibrance: 0

Apply lens profile corrections and vertical alignment.

These adjustments brighten corners, neutralize mixed lighting and protect window detail.

Building a Custom Action in Photoshop

1. Open a representative image

2. Convert to Smart Object

3. Open Actions (Window > Actions)

4. Create new Action → Record

5. Apply adjustments:

   • Camera Raw Filter

   • Curves / Vibrance layers

   • Lens Correction

   • Vertical alignment

6. Stop recording

Your action is now reusable.Test it on multiple images and tweak as needed.

Batch Processing

To apply your action to many files:

File > Automate > BatchSelect:

• Your action

• Input folder

• Output folder

Photoshop applies your adjustments to every image in the folder — a huge time-saver for large real-estate projects.

Useful Photoshop Plugins for Real-Estate Editing

Plugins greatly expand Photoshop’s capabilities and speed up processing.Popular tools for real-estate editing include:

• PixelSquid — for realistic 3D objects and virtual staging

• Camera RAW — for non-destructive tonal + color control

• Tych Panel — for creating before/after layouts

• HDR Sharpener — reduces haloing + sharpens cleanly

• Texture tools — add subtle surface realism

• AI auto-correct tools — fast global color/light fixes

These plugins help solve common issues such as inconsistent exposure, window glare, mixed lighting and empty-room staging.

Pro Tips for Better Preset Results

• Shoot RAW — preserves detail

• Start with good exposure (within ±2 EV)

• Keep verticals straight

• Neutralize white balance

• Fine-tune individually — presets ≠ final image

Presets should streamline your work — not replace manual judgment.

Working in Los Angeles?

If you’re looking for high-quality listing visuals in Southern California, hiring a professionalreal estate photographer Los Angeles ensures your property is photographed with the lighting, composition and editing expertise needed to stand out in a competitive market.

Photoshop presets and actions are powerful tools for real-estate photographers. By standardizing core adjustments, exposure, contrast, color balance, lens corrections and perspective, you create fast, repeatable workflows that turn high-volume editing into a smooth process.

Combine these presets with plugins and selective manual edits to produce natural, inviting images that help listings sell faster.