A little bit of Camera Raw and Photoshop
Often, after taking some nice food photographs, we understand that they need a "Retouch".
Sometimes they need more contrast or sometimes they need better color balance.
And here comes the photo editing programs to help us!
I personally use Camera Raw and Photoshop.
Let's see in practice ...
Let's see this image. We have chicken fillets, some cherry tomatoes, an avocado sauce and a pomegranate sauce on the sides.
I open it directly in Camera Raw.
In camera Raw I can make all the necessary changes.
In this case I worked on the exhibition, on the contrast, etc, as you can see on the right of the photo.
The saturation in food photography, ie ' the intensity of the colors. However, I always recommend not to overdo it because food photography must be as "natural" as possible.
Then I worked on Photoshop
Here I went to Filter- Shape-Unshap Mask (unsharp mask).
What is the unsharp mask for? The unsharp mask is a filter that increases the contrast between adjacent pixels, giving the edges of the image a defined appearance.
There are 3 options: Quantity' (amount), Radius (radius) and Threshold( treeshold)
After putting the most significant part of your image in the box, come and see if there is a need for changes.
The amountControls the amount of contrast you give to the edges of the image. For food photos it is better to have this not very high value. Because if the quantity is high, there is high graininess which in the photo of the food is not recommended!
The radius check how many pixel sections there are near the edges. Here I put a spoke 0,7 because the plate has many defined lines. A plate that has few lines the radius can be higher while if it has many elements the radius is better to keep it lower ( and 0,4 in giu).
The threshold serves to adjust how much the image will be modified by the filter. If it is close to zero or zero, the high contrast areas of the photo will be more in focus while the rest leaves it unchanged.
Once this is done we can move on to white balance ( always if with the changes made also with Camera Raw, the photo is not yet as we want it).
White balance refers to the adjustment of the hue of the white areas of the image.
This balance is very important because it will depend on whether our image presents itself more hot or colder.
In food photography it is always better to opt for a warm shade because it will be more "tasty" and to eat.
And here is the photo before and after the slight "facelift"
You have comments and / or questions for me? write me, I will be happy to answer you.
