I was in Bakersfield yesterday and visited the Valley Plaza mall. They had a real estate kiosk there with a touch screen where you could look at photos of homes they were featuring. The problem is that they used small digital photos and then enlarged them to full screen. If you’ve ever enlarged a digital photo, you’ll know that it looks AWFUL unless you have a good density of pixels to start with. All of the home photos I saw did not show the home well at all.

The same happens on the Internet. Sites like Realtor.com and our local MLS shrink photos when an agent uploads them. Realtor.com reduces the photo size to 300 pixels wide, the MLS to 400 pixels wide. The quality problem pops up when some MLS Search programs enlarge them to 800 pixels or above. YUCK!

How to take and submit the photography plus knowing how systems on the Internet are going to display photos is something that I’m always looking at.