How I Edit My Food Photos

Hello camera and food lovers! this post is just for you. For many years I've been doing it all wrong. Photos were always either too light and lose details or dark and boring. I wanted to have a combination between dark and light and control my photo sharpness when I increase exposure but it was impossible until I discovered Lightroom in 2014.  

It took me sometime until I managed to learn Lightroom tools. I like that you can copy and paste effects edit many photos at once and a lot more tools and features that help save time and give total control of light and colors. So here I am going to share with you my food photos editing routine. 

A good basic photo is required no matter how much editing can make your photo look better. Especially the lining of the photo. So first edit by cropping and rotating your images angles and aspects. It's important that the object of the image in the middle.

I use the Radial filter tool to edit only the food ( inside the dish, bowl .. ) so I put the mask over the food spot and start changing the exposure, clarity, and saturation first and then adjust the contrast, highlights and shadows later.  Food needs warmer saturation to look attractive and delicious.. it also need clarity about 40% is good. Of course it all depends on how the original photo is like. If the photos were already too bright that it lost some details you can reduce the exposure and increase the clarity, sharpness and shadows. You can also reduce noise if needed. 

When done editing the food spot. Move to the surroundings, I usually apply a vignette medium preset  or if I wanted more control to darken the edges I use Graduated filter and set it to the photo corners.  This way I get more spotlight and focus on the food and dark vignette surrounding just like in pro food photographies.

I am not good at step by step explaining but if you are familiar to photo editing you will understand exactly what I mean. And I hope the photos below also help showing.