2026-09-22

California's actual AB 723 disclosure rule for real estate photos — and the edits that don't trigger it

Since January 1, 2026, California has had a state law — not an MLS policy, not a brokerage guideline, an actual misdemeanor statute — that requires a "clear and conspicuous" disclosure on any real estate marketing photo that's been "digitally altered," plus a link to the original, unaltered image. It's been in effect for nearly nine months as of this post, and the liability lands on the listing agent even when someone else — a photographer, a virtual stager, an in-house marketing team — made the edit. What's easy to miss, buried in the same statute, is a second list: the specific edits California's own bill text says are not "digitally altered" at all. Here's what the law actually requires, the exact wording of that second list, and how to keep an ordinary listing photo entirely inside it.

What California's AB 723 actually requires

These facts come from the bill's own text and status record on the California Legislature's official site, not a real estate marketing blog:

The definition — and the list of edits it excludes

The statute defines a "digitally altered image" as one changed "through the use of photo editing software or artificial intelligence to add, remove, or change elements" — naming fixtures, furniture, appliances, flooring, walls, paint color, hardscape, landscape, and facade, as well as things outside the property line like streetlights, utility poles, and neighboring buildings. Then, in the same section, it draws the line most coverage of this law skips past: that definition "does not include" adjustments for "lighting, sharpening, white balance, color correction, angle, straightening, cropping, exposure, or other common photo editing" that don't change what the property actually looks like. Those two lists aren't a judgment call left to the agent — they're the bill's own words, and the second one maps almost exactly onto a handful of NearIMG's tools.

• Angle, straightening. A listing photo shot slightly off-level, or one that needs squaring up after it's off the phone, is a Rotate job — the statute's own wording, not a stretch of it.
• Cropping. Trimming a wide shot down to the actual property — less sidewalk, less sky, more house — is named directly. Crop does exactly that and nothing else to the frame.
• Lighting, white balance, color correction, exposure. Four separate words in the exclusion list, and all four are what NearIMG's Adjust tool's brightness, contrast, and saturation sliders touch — correcting a photo shot in bad light, not changing what's in the frame.
• Getting the file itself upload-ready. The statute's two lists are both about what an image shows; nothing in either one is about file format or file size. An iPhone's HEIC file, or a photo that's landed well over an MLS's upload ceiling, isn't a disclosure question at all — it's a Convert and Compress problem, solved before the photo ever reaches the "altered or not" question.

If a photo does need the disclosure

For anything that lands in the bottom group — a virtually staged room, a removed utility pole, a swapped sky — the statute's own wording for the notice is "reasonably conspicuous and located on or adjacent to the image," not a footnote in the listing description. A short, readable line burned directly onto the photo is one straightforward way to meet that — NearIMG's Watermark tool places custom text at a chosen size, position, and opacity without uploading the photo anywhere to do it. Two things worth knowing before relying on it for this specific purpose: some MLS photo policies restrict watermarks, but what those policies usually target is agent or brokerage branding — a logo, a phone number, a website URL promoting the listing agent — not a legally required alteration notice, and the two aren't automatically the same thing in every board's rulebook. And a watermark alone doesn't finish the job either way: the statute separately requires a link, URL, or QR code to the original image, which is a hosting and publishing step, not something an image editor produces. Check the specific MLS's or brokerage's current guidance before treating a watermark as the complete fix.

What this honestly can't do

• It can't create or host the required link to the original. AB 723 asks for a URL or QR code pointing to the unaltered image, not just a disclosure notice — that's a publishing step for the listing site or MLS, separate from editing the photo itself.
• It can't rule on a borderline edit. The exclusion list is specific, but real photos land in between — a shadow pulled back with the Adjust sliders is plainly excluded, while the same tool used to erase a for-sale sign from a neighbor's yard is a different question the statute doesn't spell out by name. That call belongs to the brokerage's compliance guidance or an attorney, not a general blog post.
• It only describes California's AB 723. As of this post it's the first law of its kind in the country and applies to California-licensed listing brokers and salespeople. Other states, and individual MLS boards everywhere, can and do set their own separate photo rules — this isn't a substitute for checking the ones that actually govern a given listing.

The short version

California's Business and Professions Code § 10140.8, in force since January 1, 2026, requires a conspicuous disclosure and a link to the original for any real estate photo the statute defines as "digitally altered" — and the listing agent carries that liability regardless of who made the edit. The same statute names, in its own words, what doesn't count: lighting, white balance, color correction, exposure, angle, straightening, and cropping. Rotate, Crop, and Adjust stay entirely inside that list, and Convert and Compress handle the format and file-size side the statute never touches at all — none of it a substitute for reading the actual bill text or a brokerage's own compliance guidance before an edit that does more than that.