One nice feature is the ability to download the Furniture Layer as a transparent PNG. This allows you to load the original flambient shot and the furniture layer as Layers in Photoshop, and selectively edit out any undesirable shadows or artifacts on the Furniture layer in a way that's non-destructive to the background layer.
My daughter just started working for me and I showed her this video, and asked if she wanted to take ownership of this service. She said "It's like playing Sims! I loved playing Sims." Needless to say we're in.
WOW! Talk about timing!! I'm sitting here at my desk, kind of a quiet day so just handling some admin stuff. It's been in my head for a bit, to do some research on Virtual Staging, so I open up UA-cam, and BOOM!! There's your video, right at the top!! Thanks again for sharing your wealth of knowledge. It has certainly changed my business over the past year! Cheers!
Nathan, you are so professional! I just tested Apply Design, it is as good as you said and extremely simple to use. I really appreciate that you keep on giving us very useful recommendations.Thank you for sharing.
Great tutorial, thanks a bunch! Just created my first virtually staged living room (with my wife serving as interior designer)....wow! What a great opportunity to get your significant other involved in the business.
Pretty impressive! I think professional photographers nit pick on things a vast majority wouldn't notice especially since most people are viewing houses on their smartphone. I'll have to try it out on some pictures I'm taking later this week.
Hi Nathan, thank you for this extremely interesting and helpful video. This helps me after my endless search for a usable editor for virtual staging. Keep up your great work. Greetings from germany!
Man what a video! Thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us! I'm pretty sure that these tips are really blessings and will help a lot of people to make more money =)
Thank you so much I have been looking for a software to use and nothing has jumped out at me. This looks great and I will be doing some test runs this week
Thanks Nathan!! I'm curious - do you ever try to edit a second angle with the same furniture layout? I'm guessing not judging by what you had mentioned in the video - it seems most clients would be happy to have one angle that is "white glove perfect" just to show potential, and satisfied that the rest of the angles are vacant spaces.
Thanks! Yep, I often virtually stage an entire shoot. It's easy in those cases using Applied Design since you select from a category of "Same Property" so it has the same furniture, art, etc. In fact, subsequent angles, adjoining rooms, etc. are easier since you not only have the entire room décor selected, but you also know where to place it.
I’ve started using this process. One thing I’d like is some tips for angles of the rooms and camera angles. I’ve been using the angles I normally use when there is furniture, but I’m finding the furniture awkward. Should the camera angle be higher than regular real estate photography?
Hi Nathan! Thanks for all your helpful videos, much appreciated. This software is amazing. I'm considering dipping my toes in RealEstate Photography... I typically shot weddings, sweet 15's and family portraits pre-covid. Figured this might be something I can start and make some extra $$$ on the side and not worry about having to shoot people. Am curious about how to go about pricing something like this as an add on. Thanks again for sharing... this is another arrow in my quiver!
You're very welcome. I talk about pricing in this video, and I also cover pricing in general in my ebook on business techniques for REP, here's a link if you'd like to check that out: amzn.to/3wnqdxz
Great tip, Nathan. Thanks. I just jumped on this. Practiced on two images and already sold the service at yesterday's shoot. I don't think I spent much more than 6-7 minutes on there room and my client was as impressed as I was. I did have one issue I can't figure out yet. I placed a piece of art on the wall of a bar, which is recessed. The software colored the right side of the artwork red, as if to hide it, when it should not have done so. Are you aware of a way to correct this type of behavior?
Thanks! Anything you shoot or edit for any client is provided to the client per their request, reflected in the invoice. It is up to the user of all images (virtually staged or not) to ensure they are not in violation of an image's use. Yet furniture and other virtually staged items (like wall art and throw rugs) are not property-affecting items: they aren't included with the sale of the property, so there is no difference between that and staging of real furniture. I have though completely redone yards for clients, which would be misleading, but the invoice has a line item for the work I did; thus, my work is not misleading to my client; what they do with the image is their responsibility. With that said, I have had clients ask me to add text to concept images (adding grass and removing/fixing property-affecting items) to say "Concept Image" when it comes to complete redos (adding grass, removing patios or abandoned pools, and other property-affecting items). But for virtually staged furniture, since real or virtual items like that aren't property-affecting, then it doesn't matter.
Excellent thank you, I'll definitely look into. Used Visual Stager for a while but didn't like. One caveat, why does Apply Design state in their terms " You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive license to host, copy and use your Photos"?
Thanks! But you didn't share the whole text which states that your copyrights are protected. They state in the same paragraph of the snippet you copied that "You and your licensors retain all rights and ownership of your data". This protects your copyrights while protecting them from being sued. BoxBrownie and similar competing services have similar text. Here is the link for reference: applydesign.io/tos
Hi Nathan! Thank you for this video. I tried the app and was impressed with the results. However, I did notice a slight color change in the finished image when compared to the original image. The paint colors appeared slightly muted. Have you experienced this problem? Thanks again!
You're welcome! I have seen this at times, but you can download the furniture layer, which is a PNG, and then in Photoshop add that on top of the image and then apply adjustment layers (Brightness, Saturation, Levels, etc) with a clipping mask to that layer.
So I guess I would need to have all 20+ images ready to go at once so I get the $7 deal rather than upload them one at a time for $10 as I finish them individually in the flambient workflow. Thanks again this is very much appreciated! I’ll play around with it to get my best workflow going.
No. You buy credits ahead of time and upload images whenever you want: today, tomorrow, a year from now, whenever. It's similar to other credit-purchase services where you buy credits and use the credits as you need to.
Thank you for taking the time to clear that up for me! I guess I’ve never used a credit-purchase service before. This does make it a very efficient workflow after all! Thanks again for all your great information, e-books and UA-cam tutorials!
Thank you for this video Nathan. Occasionally we have realtors asking if they can pick furniture for virtual staging. Do you know if Applied Design has a white label version for these requests?
You're welcome! They have a catalog of room bundles you can download as a PDF and pass along to your clients. Go to "Catalog" at the top of the page when you're logged in, and select "Download as PDF".
Hi Nathan, I'm enjoying your business techniques for RE photography book! The other day I had a client ask for all the raw photos from a RE shoot. I told him I don't give raw photos. I'm curious.. how do you approach these types of clients?
I never provide RAW files, so I'd tell them nope. Explain that each photo consists of anywhere between 3-8 images each, so providing the RAWs is not useful until the editing process is complete. Then give them an alternative to provide TIFFs of the finished images so they can edit those, and charge them accordingly.
Great question. You can still add furniture, and it works well most of the time. Perhaps I could do a video on advanced virtual staging to show this and other techniques?
Thanks for this video Nathan! Just what I've been looking for! Are there any shooting requirements (best practices) like how high to place the camera off of the floor, lens focal length, etc...?
That's great! Everything stays the same as shooting any other property, since the room is empty it's not hard for an AI engine to figure out walls, light, etc. For more on camera height, you might want to check out my book on interior real estate photography, not sure if you have that one yet, here's a link if you'd like to check that out: amzn.to/3t8C2ay
That's something they are working on, and I have more training material in the queue on object removal as well. In the meantime, you might like this video on large object removal: ua-cam.com/video/XF25sBuxjJs/v-deo.html
Hi Kaleb, it sounds like you might need to cover the basics first before deciding on just STU lighting, as well as other options and critical things to consider. I'd start by downloading ebook #1 in my real estate photography series (on interiors) and work your way up from there. Here's a link to the series if you'd like to check that out: amzn.to/3ijtqb3
It doesn't remove furniture, but I've removed it myself in Photoshop, and sometimes partially virtually staged a partially furnished room. You can download just the furniture layer (as PNG) to add to a Photoshop file, which gives you a ton of editing flexibility.
Thanks for the great review! Is there any concept of "match scaling" in Apply Design to ensure that the relative size of all the furnishings match (taking into account perspective and distance from camera)? I just wonder if it's hard to keep every element looking appropriately sized in relation to the room, and proportional in relation to each other furnishing item in the virtual staging set.
Thanks! You can scale an entire room using the "Room Scale" feature at the top of the editor. What you might be looking for sounds like something that would require prior knowledge of the room dimensions, as well as furniture size, which would be impossible since furniture size varies widely in the real world.
Does the image have to be a jpeg to upload to this platform or can I have a tiff or psb? I'm curious if having a higher quality file would allow me to render the images better.
JPG for upload, but you can download TIF and PNG, thus allowing you to do further editing in lossless compression. I had no quality issues using JPGs, and all my editing was done prior to virtual staging.
@@NathanCoolPhoto That's what I'm looking for, something I can do myself without having to send a photo out for someone else to place furniture in and then return it to me for $24 per photo. Thanks :)
One nice feature is the ability to download the Furniture Layer as a transparent PNG. This allows you to load the original flambient shot and the furniture layer as Layers in Photoshop, and selectively edit out any undesirable shadows or artifacts on the Furniture layer in a way that's non-destructive to the background layer.
My daughter just started working for me and I showed her this video, and asked if she wanted to take ownership of this service. She said "It's like playing Sims! I loved playing Sims." Needless to say we're in.
hahahah i was thinking the same thing finally all those hours playing the sims will payoff.
WOW! Talk about timing!! I'm sitting here at my desk, kind of a quiet day so just handling some admin stuff. It's been in my head for a bit, to do some research on Virtual Staging, so I open up UA-cam, and BOOM!! There's your video, right at the top!! Thanks again for sharing your wealth of knowledge. It has certainly changed my business over the past year! Cheers!
Perfect! And Cheers to you as well!
Wow, I just completed a VS image for a client in 6 minutes... This has changed my whole workflow!! Thanks Nathan
Fantastic!
By far one of the best tutorials on youtube. Thank you
Nathan, you are so professional! I just tested Apply Design, it is as good as you said and extremely simple to use. I really appreciate that you keep on giving us very useful recommendations.Thank you for sharing.
Glad it was helpful!
Great tutorial, thanks a bunch! Just created my first virtually staged living room (with my wife serving as interior designer)....wow! What a great opportunity to get your significant other involved in the business.
Glad it was helpful!
THIS is going to be WONDERFUL - THANKS Nathan!
You're very welcome :)
Pretty impressive! I think professional photographers nit pick on things a vast majority wouldn't notice especially since most people are viewing houses on their smartphone. I'll have to try it out on some pictures I'm taking later this week.
Hi Nathan, thank you for this extremely interesting and helpful video. This helps me after my endless search for a usable editor for virtual staging. Keep up your great work. Greetings from germany!
Glad it was helpful! And greetings from California!
I was using Visual Stager, but this looks a lot easier with very good looking results. Thanks for showing how it’s done as well.
Glad it was helpful!
Nathan, this is the holy grail. Thanks a lot.
You're very welcome.
Man what a video! Thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us! I'm pretty sure that these tips are really blessings and will help a lot of people to make more money =)
Great video and thank you for the tip on this service!
Very interesting video and topic! Thx for sharing.
Thank you so much I have been looking for a software to use and nothing has jumped out at me. This looks great and I will be doing some test runs this week
Thanks Nathan!! I'm curious - do you ever try to edit a second angle with the same furniture layout? I'm guessing not judging by what you had mentioned in the video - it seems most clients would be happy to have one angle that is "white glove perfect" just to show potential, and satisfied that the rest of the angles are vacant spaces.
Thanks! Yep, I often virtually stage an entire shoot. It's easy in those cases using Applied Design since you select from a category of "Same Property" so it has the same furniture, art, etc. In fact, subsequent angles, adjoining rooms, etc. are easier since you not only have the entire room décor selected, but you also know where to place it.
I’ve started using this process. One thing I’d like is some tips for angles of the rooms and camera angles. I’ve been using the angles I normally use when there is furniture, but I’m finding the furniture awkward. Should the camera angle be higher than regular real estate photography?
Hi Nathan! Thanks for all your helpful videos, much appreciated. This software is amazing. I'm considering dipping my toes in RealEstate Photography... I typically shot weddings, sweet 15's and family portraits pre-covid. Figured this might be something I can start and make some extra $$$ on the side and not worry about having to shoot people. Am curious about how to go about pricing something like this as an add on. Thanks again for sharing... this is another arrow in my quiver!
You're very welcome. I talk about pricing in this video, and I also cover pricing in general in my ebook on business techniques for REP, here's a link if you'd like to check that out: amzn.to/3wnqdxz
Wooooow!!!
That’s Amazing!!!
Great tip, Nathan. Thanks. I just jumped on this. Practiced on two images and already sold the service at yesterday's shoot. I don't think I spent much more than 6-7 minutes on there room and my client was as impressed as I was. I did have one issue I can't figure out yet. I placed a piece of art on the wall of a bar, which is recessed. The software colored the right side of the artwork red, as if to hide it, when it should not have done so. Are you aware of a way to correct this type of behavior?
Great! Open your image to edit it, and use the Chat tool on the bottom right. They have 24-hour service that can see what's going on and help you out.
Awesome review, do you recommend putting a disclosure on the image that the image is virtually staged to avoid legal issues?
Thanks! Anything you shoot or edit for any client is provided to the client per their request, reflected in the invoice. It is up to the user of all images (virtually staged or not) to ensure they are not in violation of an image's use. Yet furniture and other virtually staged items (like wall art and throw rugs) are not property-affecting items: they aren't included with the sale of the property, so there is no difference between that and staging of real furniture. I have though completely redone yards for clients, which would be misleading, but the invoice has a line item for the work I did; thus, my work is not misleading to my client; what they do with the image is their responsibility. With that said, I have had clients ask me to add text to concept images (adding grass and removing/fixing property-affecting items) to say "Concept Image" when it comes to complete redos (adding grass, removing patios or abandoned pools, and other property-affecting items). But for virtually staged furniture, since real or virtual items like that aren't property-affecting, then it doesn't matter.
Thank you for the explanation Nathan! 🙂
Excellent thank you, I'll definitely look into. Used Visual Stager for a while but didn't like. One caveat, why does Apply Design state in their terms " You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive license to host, copy and use your Photos"?
Thanks! But you didn't share the whole text which states that your copyrights are protected. They state in the same paragraph of the snippet you copied that "You and your licensors retain all rights and ownership of your data". This protects your copyrights while protecting them from being sued. BoxBrownie and similar competing services have similar text. Here is the link for reference: applydesign.io/tos
@@NathanCoolPhoto Then I'm not going to sweat over it. Thanks for the swift reply. Big fan of your books and channel. Best to you.
As always the best tut.
Is it possible to do that for 360° photo? If not did you know any website?
Thanks
Thanks! That is a feature they are planning on providing in upcoming revisions, hopefully this year.
Very cool. Thank you for sharing
Thanks! You bet!
Wooooow
This was greatttt
Hi Nathan! Thank you for this video. I tried the app and was impressed with the results. However, I did notice a slight color change in the finished image when compared to the original image. The paint colors appeared slightly muted. Have you experienced this problem? Thanks again!
You're welcome! I have seen this at times, but you can download the furniture layer, which is a PNG, and then in Photoshop add that on top of the image and then apply adjustment layers (Brightness, Saturation, Levels, etc) with a clipping mask to that layer.
Great review! I wasn’t quite clear on when the payment takes place. Is it during the upload, the render, or the download? Thanks Nathan!
Thanks! During upload, see ua-cam.com/video/V1fsqz_otRo/v-deo.html
So I guess I would need to have all 20+ images ready to go at once so I get the $7 deal rather than upload them one at a time for $10 as I finish them individually in the flambient workflow. Thanks again this is very much appreciated! I’ll play around with it to get my best workflow going.
No. You buy credits ahead of time and upload images whenever you want: today, tomorrow, a year from now, whenever. It's similar to other credit-purchase services where you buy credits and use the credits as you need to.
Thank you for taking the time to clear that up for me! I guess I’ve never used a credit-purchase service before. This does make it a very efficient workflow after all! Thanks again for all your great information, e-books and UA-cam tutorials!
Thank you for this video Nathan. Occasionally we have realtors asking if they can pick furniture for virtual staging. Do you know if Applied Design has a white label version for these requests?
You're welcome! They have a catalog of room bundles you can download as a PDF and pass along to your clients. Go to "Catalog" at the top of the page when you're logged in, and select "Download as PDF".
@@NathanCoolPhoto Much appreciated, that will be a big help for those clients that ask!
Can this software also do flooring? For example.... I have a photo with old carpet that needs to be replaced with laminate wood style flooring
Hi Nathan, I'm enjoying your business techniques for RE photography book!
The other day I had a client ask for all the raw photos from a RE shoot. I told him I don't give raw photos. I'm curious.. how do you approach these types of clients?
I never provide RAW files, so I'd tell them nope. Explain that each photo consists of anywhere between 3-8 images each, so providing the RAWs is not useful until the editing process is complete. Then give them an alternative to provide TIFFs of the finished images so they can edit those, and charge them accordingly.
What if the image you upload is already having some furniture in it ?
Great question. You can still add furniture, and it works well most of the time. Perhaps I could do a video on advanced virtual staging to show this and other techniques?
@@NathanCoolPhoto thanks Nathan ❤️
Thanks for this video Nathan! Just what I've been looking for!
Are there any shooting requirements (best practices) like how high to place the camera off of the floor, lens focal length, etc...?
That's great! Everything stays the same as shooting any other property, since the room is empty it's not hard for an AI engine to figure out walls, light, etc. For more on camera height, you might want to check out my book on interior real estate photography, not sure if you have that one yet, here's a link if you'd like to check that out: amzn.to/3t8C2ay
Thank you!
You're welcome!
Hi, I wonder if I can upload the photos with furniture and delete the current furniture and stage after?
Would you recommend it today or whats on top now?
Yep, I still use it today for all my virtual staging.
instead of virtual staging but do you know of how to do object removal if theres a program like applydesign but for virtual object removal?
That's something they are working on, and I have more training material in the queue on object removal as well. In the meantime, you might like this video on large object removal: ua-cam.com/video/XF25sBuxjJs/v-deo.html
awesome
I have a Yongnuo Speedlite YN600EX-RT II. Is this powerful enough that it could benefit from an umbrella?
Hi Kaleb, it sounds like you might need to cover the basics first before deciding on just STU lighting, as well as other options and critical things to consider. I'd start by downloading ebook #1 in my real estate photography series (on interiors) and work your way up from there. Here's a link to the series if you'd like to check that out: amzn.to/3ijtqb3
OMG! WOW
Is it possible to remove furniture and items with this software? Or do you need a blank canvas of a room?
It doesn't remove furniture, but I've removed it myself in Photoshop, and sometimes partially virtually staged a partially furnished room. You can download just the furniture layer (as PNG) to add to a Photoshop file, which gives you a ton of editing flexibility.
Thanks for the great review! Is there any concept of "match scaling" in Apply Design to ensure that the relative size of all the furnishings match (taking into account perspective and distance from camera)? I just wonder if it's hard to keep every element looking appropriately sized in relation to the room, and proportional in relation to each other furnishing item in the virtual staging set.
Thanks! You can scale an entire room using the "Room Scale" feature at the top of the editor. What you might be looking for sounds like something that would require prior knowledge of the room dimensions, as well as furniture size, which would be impossible since furniture size varies widely in the real world.
thank you
Does the image have to be a jpeg to upload to this platform or can I have a tiff or psb? I'm curious if having a higher quality file would allow me to render the images better.
JPG for upload, but you can download TIF and PNG, thus allowing you to do further editing in lossless compression. I had no quality issues using JPGs, and all my editing was done prior to virtual staging.
Sir, you are awesome! Do you have a Patreon?
Is this a program you can use yourself, or is it something you pay for someone to do for you?
I use it myself, super easy.
@@NathanCoolPhoto That's what I'm looking for, something I can do myself without having to send a photo out for someone else to place furniture in and then return it to me for $24 per photo. Thanks :)