10.02.2015

Simple Photoshop Tools for Editing Food Photos

10.02.2015

Simple Photoshop Tools for Editing Food Photos

Photoshop can be intimidating to learn, but with a few simple tools, you can quickly fine tune your food images so that they shine on the web! I use these editing tools in almost every food image I photograph to eliminate crumbs, seams in backgrounds, and overexposed colors. When I shoot overhead with my tripod, I tend to focus more on the composition and lighting of the image, rather than try to remove every crumb I see on the background. By using the spot healing brush in Photoshop, I can remove these crumbs after shooting so that I don’t have to risk ruining my composition while trying to remove crumbs from tight spaces. So today, I’m going to show you how to use the Spot Healing Brush Tool, Burn Tool, and Paint Brush Tool to help remove crumbs, darken parts of a photo, and remove seams from backgrounds.

Edit in Photoshop 1

When I start editing any photo, the first thing I will do is remove any crumbs. To do this, I use the Spot Healing Brush Tool and simply click over the spot I want to remove. You can find the Spot Healing Brush Tool in the left menu bar in Photoshop. You can change your brush size to as big or as little as you want, but you just want to make sure that the brush covers the entire crumb so that it removes it entirely. It’s like magic!

Edit in Photoshop 2

The next thing I do while editing food photos is to use the Burn Tool on any part of the photo that may be a little too bright. As you can see in the image below, the red bag looks slightly faded so I took the Burn Tool and went over the area to make the color a little richer. You can change the Exposure of the brush to match the level of darkness you want to achieve. I layered the before & after images below so that you can see how much richer the red color is after using the Burn Tool.

Edit in Photoshop 3

The last thing I usually do when editing food photos is remove any unwanted background seams. In this case, I had the cookies on parchment paper and the seam created an awkward diagonal line that I wanted to remove. So to get rid of this, I simply used the Paint Brush Tool (using a soft edge brush & low opacity) to brush over the seam. Before painting, you can use the eyedropper tool to pick up the color (white in this case) right along side of the line to ensure the brush tool matches the color you want.

Edit in Photoshop 4

And that’s all I do! Learning simple tricks in Photoshop can help you achieve polished images for your web & print projects. Knowing these tools can also make shooting less stressful and allow you to focus more on the composition. (If I were to remove every crumb before taking the photo, I would be shooting the same cookies for hours!)

Edit in Photoshop 5

I hope these tips were helpful for you! If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I will try to address them in a future post. Or if you have other Instagram tips & tools that you use, please share! Stay tuned next week where I will be sharing another photography post. I would love to connect with you over on Instagram or on my blog, Design Eat Repeat!

Melissa

Hey there! I’m Melissa – a US-based web/blog designer, entertainment stylist, and blogger at www.designeatrepeat. I love baking, crafting, and obsessing over my sprinkle collection. Find me on Instagram at @designeatrepeat and say hi!

Find Melissa on: 

Instagram: @designeatrepeat

Blog: www.designeatrepeat.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/DesignEatRepeat

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