Food Photography Lightroom Tutorial

Make your food photos POP with this oh-so-delicious editing tutorial

Make your food photos POP in Lightroom and learn how to edit food photography in this in depth Lightroom tutorial. Together we’ll dive in to Lightroom and learn the key techniques for editing food photos for instagram so that the colors pop and your food looks amazing.

Inside this tutorial we’ll go through several different food photos and editing styles to achieve different looks, depending on the type of food photography you’re going for. Whether you’re after a bright and vibrant food photo or are going for a more pastel or minimal look will depend both on your editing technique and the original photo you’re working with.

Grab the free foodie presets here: https://shop.signatureedits.com/free-foodie-presets

[powerkit_separator style=”solid” height=””]

Editing food photography comes down to two key factors:

1) Proper food photography techniques (Aka getting it right in camera)

2) Knowing how to work with color and effects in Lightroom to bring out the best in your photos, without making it look over edited.

Key food photography techniques (Aka getting it right in camera)

The most important part of your food photography is getting it right in camera. The closer you can get your image to look the way you want BEFORE editing, the easier it’s going to be to edit your food photos (Or any type of photos for that matter)

Key camera settings for food photography:

• Take your photos in good lighting. A large window with natural light is almost always the best option. Avoid harsh indoor lighting or taking photos outside in the harsh afternoon sun.
• Set the right exposure. Ensure you’re not clipping any highlights or shadows in your exposure so that you don’t lose detail in your image.
• Shoot in RAW whenever possible. This will allow you FAR more editing power in Lightroom, and if you make a mistake is more likely to be fixable.
• Shoot on a tripod with a high shutter speed & high f-stop to reduce shake and ensure everything is in focus. It won’t always be practical to shoot on a tripod, but whenever possible it will give you the sharpest possible results!
• Make sure your food is in focus! Lighting changes can be corrected pretty easily in Lightroom, but rescuing an out-of-focus image is much harder (and not always possible)
• Learn as much as you can about food styling and photo framing techniques
• Employ the use of color schemes. Using Monochromatic, Complementary and Triadic color palettes will greatly improve the visual appeal of your photos.

Key Lightroom editing settings for food photography:

• Find and use a reference photo for you to emulate and compare your edits to. This is a HUGE time saver and makes sure you don’t go overboard with your changes.
• Generally, brighter exposure is better when editing food photography.
• The HSL panel is your best friend. Try selectively adjusting luminance, hue and saturation (In that order) for select colors rather than applying extra saturation to EVERYTHING.
• Learn to use the tone curve for your food photos. A slight bump in the mid tones and darkening of the shadows will add an amazing pop to your images.
• The best photo editing technique is to make small, incremental improvements to your photos. Resist the urge to make massive changes to your edits and instead focus on improving things little by little – This will give you a much more natural look while producing a superior edit.

Remember: Progress comes through learning, and through putting that learning into practice!

The next time you’re cooking dinner, take a couple minutes to set up a quick food photo. You learn the most when you apply and practice what you learn.

Watch the food photography editing video above and you’ll be well on your way to mastering these key ingredients to food photography (pun definitely intended)

Now go create something awesome!

-Ryan