Houzez theme out of the box (at least up to the time I posted this) is supposed to have a feature in the theme setup that allows to have the gradient/hover overlay on or off. Since it’s essentially worthless (actually worse than worthless, I believe it makes the properties look much worse) I went to turn it off. No dice. Despite the documentation stating it’s an adjustable feature, the adjustment in the Houzez theme options wasn’t there.
To make matters worse, there wasn’t a lot of online help. I reached out to the maker without an answer. I then posted a comment in ThemeForest about the problem and I did receive a response. Not super fast, albeit it wasn’t all that slow neither. What was also very interesting to me is that I couldn’t find my rating on ThemeForest.com any longer. It was as if it was removed from what I could tell. Because Themeforest is part of several websites selling the same wordpress themes, it’s possible (kinda unlikely, but to fully CYA here) I made the rating/comment on another RELATED website.
Increasing my suspicion is the fact that the overwhelming number of ratings are very positive. Sure, it’s possible Houzez themes is super great and “everyone” loves it, albeit I’m not fully 100% convinced that negative ratings are not being removed. Seems the making of a lawsuit, however, that’s a post for another time.
All that being said, in order to remove the dark picture overlay I was given the following instructions and it appears to work. It’s a patch to be sure, which means first the code creates it, and then the following code removes it, which of course increases the processing and delivery time for the web page, but until the code can be changed/corrected/fixed, this works for me.
1. To remove overlay, Use this CSS code in Theme Options -> Custom Code -> Custom CSS
.hover-effect:before { opacity: 0; }