Sales and marketing people have known for years that there is an incomprehensible mental link between the quality of light and the human emotions that they create.  Warm light conveys feelings of security, comfort, and relaxation - all the qualities you'd want from a new home.  Exploiting this link with colored lights is an easy approach, but replacing all lighting in your home for a photo shoot is un-necessary given the tools at your disposal with a high resolution photograph and Photoshop!
 

Step 1: Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size and/or format. If you have a darkly-colored source image you may want to spend a few minutes playing with the contrast/brightness or levels to improve the overall color clarity. Please note that the image to my right was grabbed from the excellent SXC.HU archive - where there are good source images on almost any subject.

Step 2:  Click on Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Name the layer as you wish in the dialog box that appears, and press OK. A new dialog box will pop up.  Rather than applying the curve to the RGB composite we are going to edit the Red and Blue curves only.  So, select 'Red' from the drop-down Channel listbox and alter your curve to look like the one I have on the left.

Step 3: Without leaving the dialog box, go to the 'Blue' channel and enter in the curve on the left. Note:   Each image has different curve requirements depending on its composition, so feel free to tweak the Red and Blue curves as needed to suit your own needs.

Step 4: When done, just press OK... and you are done!   Of course, the beauty of this technique is that its non-destructive.  Just go back to the layers palette and double-lick on the curves adjustment layer if you need to make adjustments later. NB.   To compare before & after images, just place your mouse over the image to the left.  The difference is subtle, but very emotionally perceptible!

- Tutorial written by Man1c M0g

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