Address Verification Photo Tip:

For all of those who have encountered the need to move quick in getting your photos on BPOs, I've developed a technique has saved me sometime and allowed me to in most cases go unnoticed (or quick enough that they won't get to your car with the baseball bat). I'm sure some already know and do this but for those who don't, I thought I'd like to help.

I'm always taking street photos first from the car and then nabbing my photo requirements on the house. However, I don't take an extra photo anymore for Address Verification. If you have a graphics program (I use Photoshop) you can enlarge the photo to get the address numbers off the house. Saves me valuable time (ya' know in those special cases where they or someone else decides they would like to approach you).

I use a high megapixel camera so my photos are always large to begin with. Be careful not to zoom in too much that you lose quality (though I think it would be hard to do with the quality of the digital cameras today).

Make it a great one.

I sort of do the same thing. I crop the house number out and enlarge it from the original front photo. Some people who know they are going into foreclosure remove the house numbers, first thing. I find this a lot. They think they are so clever. I then use either the MLS photo, or the PVA photo for verification.

How many mega pixels? I've tried with mine, and maybe I'm just using a bad prog, or don't know what the heck I'm doing, cuz but they always turn out horrid

I use a 5mp with 12x zoom. I usually never have to zoom, and I can crop out the number with good clarity. The only problem is when they have brass/gold colored numbers and the house is brown or tan and the lighting is bad, then I have to zoom, some of those are hard to see with your eyes.

Mine is 5mp as well. If they remove the house numbers then I take photos of the houses on either side. What program are you using KT?

I only have a 2.1mp camera with a 2.5x zoom. It doesn't always work for me. Maybe Santa will bring me a new one!

It doesn't work for me either. It did on the camera I got for Christmas, but it died last week. WTH? Six months and it's dead- waste of $300. My "old" camera works well enough for photos, but not for zooming. I find a lot of numbers removed also.

Luckily, our tax assessor has aerial maps online that can verify the property location. I usually take a screen shot of that and upload it as a .jpg under address verification.

Here's a tip on cameras...

Go down to Circuit City... see all those pretty cameras? Ignore them.

Find the dude in the red shirt and ask to see his list of "Open Boxes"

Get 5 Mega pixels and all the OPTICAL zoom you can afford. Digital zoom is no help, that's what photoshop does.

I wanted 10-12x optical zoom... $350-$400 dollars... they had an open box Cannon for $319... but that's still a little steep for me right now. I got a $199 Panasonic with 6x optical zoom for $169. I'm very happy with it. I was using an HP 3 Meg with 3x zoom... I was happy till I lost it and got this one... then found it and made a friend happy. 3 megapixels works but you can't really zoom and crop too good.

I still take a zoomed pic of the house numbers when I can, but I have cropped one out of a front view a time or two.

By the way Holiday... even though you can't take it back to the store now, I bet that camera is under factory warranty still. I'd sure give it a shot. That's too soon to lose $300.

The program I use is just the software thingy that came w/the cam. DigiMax, I believe. I don't really care for it myself. I'm not total moron, usually, when it comes to PCs, but the edit program is not very user friendly. The camera's either 4 or 5mp, can't remember.

If the lighting is bad, use a graphics editing program and adjust the brightness/contrast until you get it to where you can see it.

As usual, ROTFLMAO @ Gary! Dude, you missed your calling, you should have been a comedian. But, seriously, you are right about the Circuit City open box specials. Two nights ago I bought a Samsung MP3 player that was given a 4 star rating by Consumer Reports for only $80! The player sold normally for $150! So, yes, I'm sure that you can find a great camera deal at Circuit City. BTW, can someone walk me through cropping the address on houses for the address verification shot. I would really like to know how to do that. My 5 megapixel only has a 4X optical zoom. Do I need more power from my optical zoom?

No 4x will be enough, and when you're cropping out it don't matter anyway. I'll assume you're using photoshop....

Always always always start with a maximum resolution pic. Always.

In photoshop, with your crop tool selected you can choose not just size but also resolution. One company requires 400x600, so this is what I use for everyone. Nobody has ever complained. Up at the top of your tool bar put in 4" high 6" wide and 100 dpi. Now click the down arrow next to the picture of the tool...hit the right circle arrow...choose first thing on the menu, New Preset. Name that preset "BPO". From now on you can just click the picture of the tool on the left and choose BPO.

With this preset selected from now on your crop tool will be forced to 4x6 proportions. You can crop as big or small as you like, it will adjust it to 400 x 600. The bigger you make your crop area the higher res the final picture because it adjusts it to 400 x 600. Some examples. If you actually selected 400 x 600 pictures from the original, your final picture will be the same resolution as that area in the original (if you select bigger than 400 x 600 the resolution stays the same more or less) Now if you selected an itty bitty area, say 4 pixels x 6 pixels Photoshop would copy each of those pixels 100 times each and you would have an incredibly blury ugly mess of a picture. Take your original high res pic, draw a crop around just the numbers, enter... SaveAs "numbers" Hit undo, back to original, now draw a crop around the whole house (but not the window frame of your car), enter, SaveAs "front" Now hit the "X" close the picture Do NOT save on closing and whala, you've got a number pic, a front view without your window frame and a high res original for your file in case you have to prove whatever.

So... you've got a picture of a house with numbers on the front... Here's some real numbers 5.0 Mega pixel = 1920 x 2560 3.0 megapixel= 1536 x 2048 My cell phone = 480 x 640. So if you crop out the house numbers, that's probably about 10% of the pic. in the 5 meg picture thats 192 x 256 real pixels... when photoshop makes it 400 x 600 its gonna have to about double it. Nobody will notice, nice pic. If you use the cell phone it's gonna have to multiply it by 10... blurry as hell. The 3Meg is somewhere in the middle.

The Optical zoom doesn't come into play here... your dealing with the picture you have. The optical zoom is for when you're 800 yards away on the otherside of the gate from the pitbull... with 3x zoom your pictures about half sky and stuff...you crop that out and you're starting with half a picture. With 12x Optical zoom, you zoom in (the lense buzzes and moves) and your whole picture is house, just like you pulled right up to it. My current camera is 6x, quite adequate, but I want more more more...

Man that was a long post, my fingers hurt.

Wow, you guys are getting too technical for me. I have probably taken more than 10,000 BPO photos and never cropped a photo yet.

Well, I think I can follow all of the directions easily enough, but, now, I see my problem...I'm not using photoshop! I'm using some default program that came with my Dell computer. How much does it cost to buy photoshop?

We haven't had to crop photos either but sometimes we need to adjust the brightness/contrast a little. Photoshop can be free if you know the right people...

Adobe Photoshop

Mr. Google wouln't pirate photoshop for you but he'll find a dark grey market copy for about $100 if you ask real nice.

After an incident two weeks ago that was less than favorable, I'll use any means reasonable to shorten my stays in places that I don't feel safe. If it's Photoshop or the baseball bat, I'll take Photoshop. It just happens to be a tool that is convenient for me to use and easily accessible.

Glad to hear others have been doing it, too. JASC Paint is another program that would work well in cropping, also. I've rarely used it but it can be done.

Photoshop is unnecessary actually. Microsoft photo editor works just as well for cropping and doing simple touch-up work and is a helluva lot cheaper too. I think it comes with MS office.

No doubt photoshop is an overkill for BPO photo's... it really shines when it comes to making flyers, brochures,websites, postcards, business cards, newspaper ads, newsletters, labels and the like for the rest of your business.

If you have photoshop for other uses, its great for BPO's but I doubt I'd buy it just for the BPO work.