Doctor Photo Ltd (DCTR)

He saw the need for estate agents to have their own photos enhanced by the addition of blue skies, correcting exposure/colours and verticals and by deleting unwanted items including anything from toothbrushes in bathroom photos, to builders’ skips and scaffolding from exteriors. Tidying/decluttering kitchens in rental and sales properties is also a significant part of the business.

John started Doctor Photo when a few agents asked him if he could help them by improving their photos, and within six months, he had commissioned what is believed to have been the very first platform in the world dedicated to helping estate agents improve their property photography. To this day, John continues to teach agents how to take their photos to a professional standard, but the main business is now skilfully managed by MD Tom Durrant.

Tom is a former marketing professional with International brands including Pepsi, BCG, and KFC. he has evolved the business into a full-blown property marketing agency with a multi-disciplined team of architects, photo editors, designers, web designers, video editors, social media, and support specialists. Today, DCTR serves the largest UK property developer brands including Berkeley Homes, country house agents such as Savills and everyone in between those and the smallest in size estate agents and developers who might only build a house every now and again. A growing sector is Build-to-Rent where projects can easily comprise 1200 units or more. Housing associations, commercial developers and so on, all of these sectors benefit from the services that we provide.

Having a multi-disciplined team means that even the largest projects can be handled in-house. So, project-specific websites, hoarding designs and brochures can be ready on time, because central coordination means that the assets including CGIs, floor plans, site plans and copy are all available as and when they are needed.

One of the most popular services is the addition of 3D virtual furniture to agents’ own photos, enabling potential buyers to see how empty rooms will look as a home – helping to create positive emotions and to encourage them to take the important next step of making their enquiry.

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) today takes many forms. They can be still representations of exteriors and of rooms. They can be animated. They can be turned into 360-degree tours, and they can also be built as Virtual Reality tours that can be moved around in much the same way as you can with online games. We can even build virtual marketing suites with models of building sites that can be clicked on to see a walk-through for any unit.

Another major claim by DCTR is that the business now has a second world’s-first. It is the first in the world to offer a full-service property marketing platform WITH AI. Agents can now upload, say, 50 photos to have blue skies added, colours, exposures, and verticals corrected and have them fully enhanced and ready to download in less than 3 minutes. To our knowledge, there are only a couple of other providers with an AI offering but DCTR’s platform is the only one where customers can reject any edit that they think would have been better handled by one of our artists. On the same platform, it is also possible to upload photos to have cars and other items deleted and to have virtual furniture added. We can even delete old furniture and add new stuff. AND we can digitally complete a part-built building to show what it will be like once it’s been physically completed. This means that developers can now get their properties onto the market faster than before. They can also test how various finishes might look before they go ahead and build them. And they can do all of this via the one, simple platform interface.

The service is also available to private owners who have plans for their properties and just want to be able to visualise how a certain floor tile might look in their hall, or how their elevation might look with the windows painted grey and tiling replaced with render. We have even digitally demolished walls to open rooms up to one another, and built a CGI kitchen into those. In other images, we have added decorated walls to stud partitioning, and then added flooring and digital furnishing – all so that prospective purchasers can have a better idea of the final potential ‘look’ of a property and give them the confidence that they would be unable to get with just an architect’s plans

Almost anything is possible. All we need are clear directions, drawings, specifications etc (where appropriate) and we’ll do the rest.