Tips for taking high quality listing photos

Getting quality digital images from you is our top priority. Since we are a large format, full color magazine, it is very important for us to get good images to start with.

The 1/3 Rule

When you take your photos or digital images, we recommend that you follow the simple 1/3 RULE. That means when you're composing the home in the viewfinder of your camera, you should have 1/3 sky, 1/3 house and 1/3 foreground. If you follow this simple rule, your image should not have any cropping problems when we place that image on your page.

The importance of image resolution

If the size of your digital image is 640x480 pixels at 72 DPI that equates to an image that will print at 2-1/8" x 1-1/2".

Our 4-color printing process will convert your 640x480 72 DPI image into a 160x120 300 DPI image.

That means the image you see on your computer screen will actually print at only 25% of that size!

Never scan an image from print

You should never try to scan an image from a printed brochure or magazine.

First and foremost, you may be violating federal copyright laws. Every image you see used commercially has been copyrighted and is someone else's property. That would be stealing! You may however be able to obtain permission from the image's owner to use the image... usually for a fee.

A good digital image:

A bad digital image:

When you send us digital images, you MUST use the following guidelines:

Due to software restrictions, we can only accept these formats:
TIFF images (.tif)
BITMAP Images (.bmp)
JPEG Images (.jpg)
Adobe Photoshop Images (.psd).

Your images should be sized properly. An image size of 1024 x 768 pixels will be sufficient for most listings. Our rule of thumb is this, give us a 300 DPI image at 100% of the size you want it to print at.

Your images must be named properly. DO NOT name your images as MVC-OO4S.JPG. If we have to figure out which images belong to each piece of ad copy, we CAN NOT be held responsible for incorrect photos on your ad. Please name all your images with a complete street address (123 Oak Terrace NE). Please help us get your ad right by naming your images this way.

We prefer to get CMYK images from you. We will accept RGB images and convert them, but we will not guarantee the color quality of the image. You can email your digital photos or you can upload them through our online tools. Please be advised... It may take several minutes to upload each image if you have a slow internet connection.

Image size reference guide at 300 PPI