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SnapSnapSnap is a listing photo enhancement app from image marketing company BoxBrownie.
Platforms: iPhone (Android pending)
Ideal for: Real estate agents, teams and brokerages
Updated: Sept. 29, 2023
Top selling points:
- Professional quality end result
- Minimalist user experience
- Easy integrated edit selections
- Fast turnaround
- Value proposition
Top concern:
The app will have adoption challenges only because of the optics, pun intended. Agents using an iPhone to capture a home may not garner a lot of support from their seller. Users will need to work around this.
What you should know:
SnapSnapSnap (Snap) is a mobile app for capturing listing photos. What’s unique about it is that it takes about 60 photos for one tap of the iPhone’s shutter button, capturing a space at all aspects of exposure. Because the capture takes a few seconds, as the iPhone does when taking a photo in Night Mode, a tripod is required … well, highly recommended, for the best results. Photos are uploaded automatically to BoxBrownie, if that option is selected, for final processing and integration of any additional edits, such as sky replacement, grass enhancement, virtual staging or even placing fire in the fireplace. Users need only move the tripod to each room needing to be photographed.
SnapSnapSnap digitizes bracketing, a photography technique that captures the same photo at multiple exposure settings, the ultimate goal being to combine them into a single shot. This is what makes it possible now to see clear, discernible exteriors from an interior photo. SnapSnapSnap has essentially catalyzes that technique, using seven brackets in Pro Capture Mode, five in Balanced Capture and three in Quick Capture Mode.
Adobe offers a greatly simplified definition of bracketing. Read it.
In Pro Capture mode, Snap takes about eight seconds to complete each photo, and you can watch it work through the exposure spectrum.
The company told me that in blind tests users couldn’t tell the difference between a photo taken by a professional photographer and a typical user of its app. Keep in mind that while end quality may be equal, a good real estate photographer will have a better sense of composition and general artistry. But, this is a living room we’re talking about, not Yosemite Valley. Be judicious in reducing clutter and ensuring you’re not overwhelming the viewer and you’ll likely be in good graces with your seller when the results come in.
The app comes with some categorized upsells, if you want them, such as virtual staging, day-to-dusk transitions and exterior updates. Choosing one will slide open another screen to select more specific edits, such as something compelling on the TV screen if it’s in the shot.
Users can review a photo before sending it to the cloud and even manually tag and mark-up images to be removed or added to each image. Don’t worry, Snap eliminates what you add to the screen before finalizing.
If you have an existing BoxBrownie account, the app will provide a summary of your photo order and add it to your history. New users are welcome to download the app as a stand-alone product, but you will need to create an account, as you would with any mobile application.
In a recent interview with artificial intelligence software company Restb.ai, which scans listing photos for actionable data, Chief Product Office Nathan Brannen said that the company has enough image data to know that homes marketed with overcast exterior shots take an average of 12 days longer to sell.
But there’s more to it than that. Agents need to be cognizant of the role artificial intelligence has, and will continue to have, in real estate marketing. Multiple companies, including the major portals, are extracting data from images and using it to make search faster and smarter. It eliminates filter-based search which relies on hard parameters to deliver objective results, instead of a fluid, amenity- and quality-based search. By comparing room quality, appliance brands, exterior views and primary baths directly, a shopper is able to make better decisions sooner.
And while interior photos are crucial, AI tools like Restb.ai are also reading exteriors, and of course, curb appeal counts.
“We can detect pools, patios, decks, are they covered or not, garage spaces, electric meters, gas meters, exterior quality, and architectural styles,” Restb.ai’s Brannen told me.
He said architectural styles can be hard to identify because of market-to-market inconsistencies. Naturally, a good photo can help. So don’t be part of the problem.
In short, the better your photos, the easier it is for consumers to find your seller’s property, and fairly compare it to the best possible alternatives.
This app can fill a big gap in the market by helping agents not quite equipped to pay for professional photography, or when the listing doesn’t always demand it. Snap can elevate bland properties and more importantly, how the next seller you speak to sees what you’re capable of. This is a powerful example of how technology is changing the way the industry works for the better.
To address my primary concern of sellers being skeptical of you using an iPhone, and this is one BoxBrownie is aware of as well, perhaps the company could offer its users a breakdown of features and demonstrations of quality for agents to show clients during listing presentations. The notion of using such an established tech-forward marketing partner like BoxBrownie could help as well.
In terms of end-result quality and ease of use, I haven’t seen an app more capable than this, and there are a lot of them out there offering rapid bracketing capability, but not to this extent yet.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
