Here we have put together a few photography tips to help your property look its best.

"Lights! Camera! Action!" It's no surprise that lighting gets top billing as Hollywood's favourite phrase. It really is that important. Good lighting not only ensures a successful photo, but also conveys mood, emotion, and depth. The direction, quality, and intensity of the light each have a dramatic effect on the photos of your home. Turn all your lights on and make sure to open all blinds and curtains. Never shoot into direct sunlight, if it seems to be a problem in one of your rooms try kneeling down, this will usually help.

Small rooms

Picturing small rooms can sometimes be a problem as they will often appear to look smaller than they actually are. The best way to combat this is to hold the camera and start walking out of the room until just before you see the door frame, this will show the rooms true size. Also in all indoor property pictures try to get the flooring, a window, a nice feature and as many walls in the picture as possible this will also help show the rooms actual size.

Garden pictures

On the other hand there are no set rules for taking pictures of your garden. Trying different angles and heights is the best way to get a good photo, but if you feel you have a nice feature in your garden try taking more than one picture.

Main outside picture

I know it sounds ridiculous but this is your most important picture. I say this because on the web this is the first picture potential buyers will see and a good outside shot will hopefully entice people to look at further details. First off try not to picture your home face. Instead try standing in line with your neighbour’s house and then take your picture this will look a lot better than a face on photo. Also try take as much sky in the picture as possible but make sure you can still see the walkway to your door.

And finally make sure toys, unnecessary furniture, and toiletries are removed before taking your pictures. Televisions should be turned off and toilet seats put down. Also it’s not essential but flowers and candles make a home look very warm and inviting. If you follow these tips your home will look fantastic and may sell a lot faster.

Preparing photos for the internet

We start off with how to resize your scanned or digital photos down to a size suitable for using on the Internet. Hundreds of photographs advertising property are ruined by uploading them at the wrong size (too big to view comfortably or too small to appreciate the details), or by saving them with the wrong JPEG settings.

The methods described in this article can be used with pretty much every graphics and photo editing package available on all types of computer. You may use a free package that came with your digital camera or scanner, and there are many dozens of alternatives, some of which are available as free downloads.

Here are 4 simple steps to follow for better

1. Resizing your photos
2. Sharpening after resizing
3. Saving as a JPEG
4. Check before uploading to the Internet

1. Resizing your photos

Most photos, whether they are from a digital camera or scanned from film, will start off at a high resolution, suitable for printing. Even a basic 2 megapixel camera will take photos at around 1600 by 1200 pixels, which is far too large for easy viewing on a computer screen.

So firstly, choose a size (measured in pixels wide by pixels tall) that will work well on most computer screens, without forcing people to scroll their browser window in order to see different parts of your photo. Most people use 14" - 17" screens, with a screen resolution of between 800 and 1280 pixels wide. A "good" size for a photo on the Internet is around 750 pixels wide if it is a 'landscape format' photo (i.e., wider than it is tall), or around 750 pixels tall if it is a 'portrait format' photo (i.e., taller than it is wide).

Next you need to use a program to resize your photo down to this size (this is also called 'resample' or 'rescale' in different programs). Don't confuse this with cropping your photo, which means chopping bits off of the photo - resizing will keep the whole photo, but just reduce the number of pixels to the size you want..Some resizing methods leave you with 'jaggies' or jagged lines. If you are getting these try using a different resizing method. There may be an option in the resizing tool called "anti-aliasing" which you should switch on. The worst packages for resizing photos seem to be Microsoft Paint, and Microsoft Photo Editor (included with Office 97) - you are better off using one of the free packages like Irfanview

2. Sharpening after resizing

For some photos, you'll notice that they look a bit 'soft' and out of focus after resizing. These can be improved with use of a sharpen tool (called Unsharp Mask or USM in Adobe Photoshop).

As with any tool, it is easy to get carried away. A photo that has been obviously oversharpened can look much worse than a slightly soft photo. It is also worth realising that a sharper photo will save as a bigger JPEG file (because of all the edge detail) which might make it harder to create a small, high quality JPEG.

Saving as a JPEG

JPEG files (filenames with the suffix .JPG on some computers) are photographic images that have been compressed using a particular method that makes the files much smaller and hence much faster to download. Your graphics package will let you save your photo as a JPEG with various different quality settings - unfortunately these options are called lots of different things, depending on which graphics package you use! For example, the JPEG quality setting might be called the compression setting, and it might be a simple high/medium/low setting, or a number 1..10 or even 1..100.

The higher the quality of the saved JPEG, the less compression that is used, the larger the file ends up being. You can experiment by saving a photo at different settings. As you reduce the quality, you'll begin to see unwanted 'compression artifacts' such as halos around detailed areas, blocky colour in skies or seas, and eventually bleeding of colours and loss of details.

So the 'trick' is to find a JPEG quality where your photo looks good, but is also under the file size limit. For some photos with a lot of detail in them, it might seem impossible to get them under 120kb, in which case you will need to start again from your original hi-resolution photo and this time choose a lower resolution, such as 600 by 400 pixels instead of 800 x 600 pixels.

A good rule is use the highest JPEG quality you can, which means a file size of between 90kb and 120kb

4. Check before uploading to the Internet

If you aren't confident about whether you've used the right JPEG quality, load the photo back and check it. When you save your photo, most packages don't show you how the quality is being effected, so the best way to check is to load the new JPEG into your web browser, so you can see exactly what it will look like on the Internet. If you are using Windows, you can view a local photo in your web browser by clicking the filename with the right mouse button, then choosing 'Open with -> Internet Explorer' from the menu.

If you don't like the settings, delete the photo, and save again at a different setting. Make sure that you use the original file to work from, not the poor quality one!

Please also bear in mind that if you are not happy with your pictures or any part of your description you may change it at any stage though the edit my property section