Taking photos you can compare

Last reviewed 20 October 2026 · by Eddy Hwang

A before-and-after pair is only useful if the two photos show the same thing in the same way. A few habits make that easy.

Repeat the position

Stand in a spot you can find again: in the doorway, with your back to a wall, or at a tile line.
Hold the phone at the same height. Chest height works for walls; for floors, point straight down from standing height.
Use the same lens. If you used the 1x camera at move-in, do not switch to the wide lens at move-out; it changes how big marks look.
Open your move-in photo on the screen before you shoot the move-out one, and line up an edge such as a door frame.

Repeat the light

Turn on the room lights and open the blinds the same way each time. Avoid shooting straight into a window: the camera darkens the room and hides details. A flash can make scratches look worse or disappear, so if you used it once, use it both times or not at all.

Give a sense of size

For a close-up, put a common object next to the mark: a coin, a key or a ruler. Write the object in the note so the reader knows the scale.

Keep the frame honest

Show a little of the surroundings so the spot can be recognised. MoveRecord never crops your photos: each one is shown whole inside its frame, at its own proportions, so the PDF does not hide the edges you included.

Illustration only: the dashed door edge sits in the same place in both frames, so the new mark on the right is easy to see.

Name items the same way

When you restore your move-in backup at move-out, each item keeps its name and note. Add the move-out photo to the same item instead of creating a new one, and the PDF will place the two next to each other.