Comment: 'developers and princesses alike must beware photoshop fails when selling a dream'

Everyone wants to look their best, from picture-perfect princesses to properties being put on the market.

Feeling you don’t look your best post surgery? Grey day making your façade look a bit sad?

Until now, regents and agents alike could reach for a little light photoshop with minimal pushback.

But in our new post-truth era when images produced by AI are cluttering up newsfeeds, the public, understandably, has a suspicious mindset when it comes to retouching that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality.

It’s not just Kensington Palace facing down a digital manipulation comms crisis this week.

A suit has been filed in Manhattan Supreme Court against developer Michael Shvo by disgruntled buyers of a $6.1 million condo.

In marketing materials the Fifth Avenue turnkey apartments look gorgeous, but the new owners were horrified to find a whole host of snagging issues.

Claimant John Goodman told the New York Post he paid full price for and apartment in the Mandarin Oriental Residences after being swayed by the “sophisticated photos and renderings”, only to find missing doors, dodgy wallpaper, and the inclusion of only two $100-a-piece place mats when there were clearly six in the promotional pictures. So, it was refreshing to see London agency Wetherell boast about using CGI to sell a £25 million Mayfair mansion this week.

It wooed the buyer, a billionaire from the Gulf, with a virtual staging, enlisting a specialist digital design studio to create imagined images of what the empty rooms could look like.

It’s not just prime property; I’ve seen this method used for shared-ownership flats in historic buildings, too.

If you’re not over-promising, a little digital manipulation can be helpful.

Just don’t put out blatant misinformation when an anxious public is searching for comfort amid conspiracy theories — or stiff them on the place mats.