QuickStage has two treatments for exterior photos. Curb Appeal changes the conditions in a daytime photo: a dull or overcast sky becomes natural blue, a brown or patchy lawn greens up, and lighting and color are balanced. Twilight changes the hour: the sky turns to dusk and the windows glow warm. Both are built to keep the house itself as photographed, including its architecture, siding color and material, roofline, windows, doors, driveway, walkways and the camera angle, and neither adds furniture.
That's the behavior as of October 2026. Below: one table of what changes and what stays, a rule for picking between the two, the source photos that suit each, and the disclosure rules for an edited exterior.
How do you pick an exterior treatment in QuickStage?
Add your photo and choose Exterior as the room type. The menu next to it, which reads Style for interior rooms, changes to Treatment and lists only two options: Curb Appeal and Twilight. The eight interior decor styles aren't shown for an exterior, and the form starts you on Curb Appeal when you switch a photo to Exterior, so check the menu if you wanted Twilight.
You'll find it at the Exterior option in QuickStage's upload form. The form accepts JPEG, PNG, WEBP and HEIC photos up to 20 MB each, up to 10 at a time, and you can mix exteriors and interior rooms in one upload.
An exterior uses one credit, the same as an interior room. There's no surcharge and no separate product. Results take about 30 seconds and are also emailed to you, with no watermark.
What does each treatment change, and what does it leave alone?
| In the photo | Curb Appeal | Twilight |
|---|---|---|
| Sky | A dull, overcast or blown-out sky becomes natural blue with a few soft clouds | Becomes a dusk sky: deep blue overhead, warm glow at the horizon |
| Lawn | Brown or patchy grass is greened up | Built to stay as photographed |
| Lighting and color | Balanced to a warm daylight look; color casts removed | Rebalanced for dusk, with the house softly lit |
| Windows | Stay as photographed | Glow with warm light, as if the interior lights are on |
| Porch, garage and landscape lights | Stay as photographed | Glow if they're in the photo; built not to invent fixtures |
| Loose clutter (bins, hoses, a car) | Cleaned up only when it's partly visible at the edge of the frame | Not part of this treatment |
| Plants, beds and trees | Never added or removed | Never added, removed or reshaped |
| Architecture, siding color and material, roofline, windows, doors | Never changed | Never changed |
| Driveway, walkways and other hardscape | Never changed | Never changed |
| Camera angle and framing | Never changed | Never changed |
| Furniture, people, vehicles, text | Never added | Never added |
"Never" in that table describes what each treatment is built to do. It's the design rule, and you should still compare every result with the original before you post it. Check the roofline, the window count, the siding color and the trees. If anything about the property differs, don't use that result.
Two rows deserve a closer look.
Clutter. Curb Appeal is built to clean up loose items like a trash can or a hose only when they're partly visible at the frame edge, and never to remove a fixed feature. A car parked in the middle of the driveway is not something to leave to the treatment. Move it before you shoot.
The lawn. Only Curb Appeal greens the grass. Twilight is built to keep the lawn and landscaping as they are, so a dusk conversion of a brown yard is still a brown yard, just in softer light.
Which one should you pick? The bad day or better hour rule
Ask what is actually wrong with the photo you have.
- A bad day: use Curb Appeal. The house is fine, but the shoot landed on a grey afternoon, the sky is blown out, or the color is flat. The treatment gives you the photo a clear day would have given you.
- A better hour: use Twilight. The daytime photo is fine, and you want a dusk image as well. Twilight converts a daytime exterior, so you don't need a second trip at sunset.
- A problem with the house: use neither. Peeling paint, a sagging gutter, missing shingles or a cracked driveway aren't weather. No treatment is built to change them, and you shouldn't want one to.
If you can't decide between the first two, run both. Each version uses one credit.
Which source photos suit each treatment?
These are our suggestions. Both treatments work on a photo you already have.
For Curb Appeal:
- A daytime photo of the front of the home, with the whole house in frame and some sky and lawn visible.
- A level camera, either straight on or at a slight three-quarter angle. The treatment keeps your angle and framing, so it won't straighten a tilted shot.
- Overcast light is fine. Flat, even light on the house is easier to balance than hard midday shadows across the front.
- Avoid a frame where a tree or a parked vehicle covers half the house. The treatment isn't built to remove either one.
For Twilight:
- A daytime photo, since the treatment converts day to dusk. Don't start with a shot that's already dark.
- Windows that face the camera. The glow is the point of the image, and a wall with no visible glass gives the treatment little to work with.
- Porch lights, sconces or garage lights that are visible in the frame. Existing fixtures glow; new ones aren't added.
- A clear stretch of sky above and behind the roofline, so the dusk sky has room to show.
For either one, upload the original file from the camera or phone, not a screenshot. Anything over 2,048 pixels on its longest side is resized to 2,048 before processing.
Where does an edited exterior go in the gallery?
The front exterior is usually the lead photo, and that's where a treated photo will usually sit. Our rule is simple: the original goes right next to it. Put the unedited exterior immediately before or after the edited one, so a buyer scrolling the listing sees what the house looks like on an ordinary day.
In NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Staging, 73% of buyers' agents say listing photos are highly important to their clients. That survey is about staging the home, not about edited exteriors, but it shows why the lead photo has to be honest.
What do you have to disclose about an edited exterior?
A Curb Appeal or Twilight result is an altered image. Label it as digitally altered and keep the original available. That holds whether or not your state requires it: a buyer who pulls up to a house that doesn't match the photo stops trusting the listing.
Never use a treatment to hide a defect. A lawn that was dormant on shoot day and will be green by the time buyers visit is a seasonal fix. A lawn that is dead and will still be dead at the showing is a judgment call, and if you green it up you must say so. Missing shingles, cracks, power lines, a utility pole and the neighboring houses are never things to edit out, and neither treatment is built to remove them.
California. AB 723, codified as Business and Professions Code §10140.8 and in force since January 1, 2026, requires a disclosure that the image was altered, plus a link, URL or QR code to the unaltered original.
Your MLS. Many MLSs have their own rules, and some are stricter about exteriors than about staged rooms. CRMLS in California is one example. Its Rule 11.5.2 FAQ on digitally altered images says altered images must be labeled and the original shown immediately before or after. It also says subscribers may not post a photo altered to change real property elements, landscape included, unless the property will be improved to match by close. On our reading, a greened lawn or a dusk conversion may not be allowed there at all. Ask before you upload.
This isn't legal advice; check your MLS and broker.
What does an exterior photo cost?
The same as any other photo. Your first 3 photos are free, with no account and no card. After that it's $1 per photo pay-as-you-go with no subscription. Monthly plans start at $19.99, and the rate goes as low as $0.11 per photo on the annual Agency plan, billed yearly. The full table is in the current QuickStage price list.
QuickFix re-dos are included on plans. QuickFix re-runs a photo with a typed note on what to change, without spending a credit. The examples we publish for it are furniture corrections, so if an exterior result misses, check the source photo against the list above first.
Bottom line
Curb Appeal fixes a bad day: blue sky, green lawn, balanced light. Twilight gives you a better hour: dusk sky and glowing windows. Both are built to leave the house, its permanent features and your camera angle exactly as photographed. Neither is for hiding a defect. Label the result as digitally altered, keep the original next to it, and check your MLS before it goes live.
Run one exterior and two rooms through QuickStage free, no card needed.