Ask the agent
An agent asked for a revision I don’t agree with. Do I do it?
Do the edit. A color or exposure fix she asks for takes less time than the email arguing about it, and she’s the one standing next to the seller. Your rules sit on two other things: which misses are yours to reshoot, and the one change you never make, which is changing the house itself.
A color fix is the cheapest way to keep her
Read her note again. She didn’t ask for a new fence. She asked for the orange and gray to stop shouting across every front exterior. That’s a color mask and a saturation slider. A few minutes, done before lunch.
She isn’t grading your art. She’s managing a seller who looked at the listing and saw the fence before the house. Every exterior frame repeated it. Softening it is not a lie about the property; it’s the same color correction you’d do on a yellow ceiling.
The photographer who sends back "the fence looks how the fence looks" is right and loses the agent. The one who sends back "done, softened across every exterior" is also right, and gets the next listing.
Know which misses are yours
Some revisions are on you, and those are free. The most common one I see is washed-out exteriors: midday sun, no clouds. That’s the time of day, not the edit, and the fix is a reshoot booked early or late. I say so and book it.
Most reshoot calls start on site. Shoot at least four angles in every room, every time. A fixed count means you stop deciding room by room, and the angle she asks for later is usually already on your card.
Then keep the raw files for a month. Agents come back way after the fact: a different hero shot, the backyard from the deck, the room the seller finally cleaned. If you kept it, that request is a five-minute export instead of a drive across town.
The one revision you don’t do
"Soften the orange" is color correction. "Make the fence look new" is changing the house. The first is a revision. The second is an altered image, and a buyer is going to walk past that fence on the way to the front door.
That line is now written down in a lot of places. California has required a label and a link to the unaltered original on altered listing photos since January 1, 2026, and its list of covered changes includes landscape, hardscape and facade. A growing list of MLSs require the original posted right next to the altered one.
So when the request crosses from light and color into walls, floors, fences, lawns or the view, say it plainly: that’s a stain job, not an edit, and if you do it in software it has to be labeled with the original beside it. She’ll respect the answer. Her license is the one on the listing.
Done, softened the orange on the fence across every exterior. If you want it to look new, that’s a stain job, not an edit, and I’d have to label it.
Fix color and light without a fight; never change what the buyer will walk up to.
This week: add three lines to your booking confirmation: re-edits are free, reshoots are free when the miss is yours, and you don’t change permanent features of the house.
The delivery checklist
What she actually needs when the files go out. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.
Get the checklistGet my roadmapStraight answers
- How many revisions should a real estate photographer include?
- Color, exposure and straightening fixes: as many as it takes, the same day. They cost minutes. Reshoots are free when the miss was yours, and changes to the house itself aren’t revisions at all.
- Should I charge for a real estate photo reshoot?
- Not when the miss is yours. Wrong light is the most common one, and the fix is booking the reshoot early or late in the day.
- Can I edit out things the agent asks me to remove?
- Moving clutter on site is free and needs no label. Removing things in software is an altered image in California and under a growing list of MLS rules, so it gets labeled with the original beside it. Permanent features shouldn’t be changed at all.
Related questions
Julian Lundgren sold real estate for nine years before he shot a listing for money. He runs Cineminn, a Minneapolis real estate photography studio, and writes these answers from the agent’s side of the table. Send a question to info@cineminn.com.