Ndtyhij

I have a photo that was taken by a third-party photographer (i.e. I was not the one who postprocessed it). I've been told by a number of people that this photo looks unrealistic, more like a computer-generated render than a photo of a real-life place. I can see where they are coming from, as this photo looks a bit off to me as well. However, I can't pinpoint the reasons why it doesn't look real.

Can you all help me articulate why this photo looks unrealistic? I believe it has something to do with the condensed dynamic range — the shadows seem to be rather nonexistent, and there aren't many highlights. However, I can't figure out if this is the only reason, or if there are more factors contributing to the lack of realism.

Certainly the biggest factor is the dynamic range processing. The room is so bright, and shares the same color temperature as the outdoors daylight lighting. Yet the shadows in the balcony and near the glass door, which are closer to the light source, are the darkest parts of the scene.

Also, one "fakeness" indicator that your mind might not have caught, but your eye did, is the scene in the mirror. The few parts of the sky in the mirror are clearly blown out white, but the sky visible directly through the window is a nice sky blue. An interior even partially that bright would have a blown out sky, if not also more of the general light-colored scene outside the window. For instance, the "tent" pavillion (that looks like a mini version of Denver's airport) is completely blown out.

Good architectural / real estate shots are hard. This is one of the better something's-not-quite-right ones (as opposed to the surrealist crank-the-hdr-to-eleven ones that are more typical).

Try to imagine how this can be improved by controlling the outdoor lighting — either early in the morning, or late in the evening. The light level outside would be brought way down, and provide dynamic shadows on the buildings. That would allow for better control of the indoor lighting (whether by longer exposure from natural light, or with use of artificial lighting from the table lamp or via flashes).

The thing that sets off the alarm is the perfectly bright and uniform lighting in the room, especially on its ceiling. The room should be quite dark, since the sun is on the other side of the building (according to the building in the background). You can see through the window (and in the big mirror) that the ceiling of the balcony is more realistically in the shadow.

The focus seems too even to me.  I would expect a photo taken to have something blurrier, either in the foreground or background.

Assessment based on photos found by @shoover.

The exteriors match reality (Google aerial view at least).

However some trickery is going on there. In another comment I mentioned long (or multiple) exposures to account for massive depth of field to maintain focus. Looking at images 1/35 and 6/35 from the set in the link it is possible to see ghost pedestrians and vehicle that would be just too much trouble to insert so I assume they are long exposure artefacts or real people.

If we accept that images are photographs and of real object then we have to assume the digital filtering and/or post processing is responsible for cleaning up surface dirt somehow, maximising exposure range in each image area and air brushing out blemishes.

One thing to note that may cause unease is the probable presence of other than right angles on some of the exterior wall corners. The building when viewed in aerial photo mode on the map on the linked page seems to be a non-orthogonal design.

Property advertisement was for a value of over US$1million so money was available to process photos and set up professional lighting. The real skill here is processing each image equally well and consistently. Managing to get times with minimal humans in sight and movement of vehicles is harder.

Shadows — or the lack of. This makes the scene look like a computer rendering with ambient lighting coming from everywhere. The walls and ceiling look sterile and a little too pristine. And whatever treatment was given to the scene outside the windows (some kind of tone mapping) made that look flat, and the reflection on the window happens to look just pretty much exactly like something artificial drawn there to signify glass.

There are a number of things which come together — really, I think I'd be hard-pressed to replicate a scene this fake-looking on demand. But, still, the number one thing is lack of natural-seeming shadows. You don't want them to be harsh and stick out — that won't look fake but it will look like you don't know what you're doing. But there should be some dynamic range.