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Yesterday I posted some white-balance tips for shooting food photography. In this post I’m going to go through the steps I took to edit the image. The photo used in this post is from the same shoot and is edited identically to the image in the previous post.

I reduced the images sizes in this post for format purposes … feel free to click on them to view in a larger resolution.

The images I photograph, whether they are for work or for fun, always go through Adobe Lightroom before I edit in Photoshop, and sometimes, if they are not “work” images, I will just export straight out of Lightroom and not even use Photoshop. I’ve been using the program ever since it was released and have found it to be an essential part of my workflow.

So, for this image, I started by editing the RAW file in Lightroom. I made some slight temperature and tonal adjustments (the changes are hi-lighted in yellow). Then I exported the image as a PSD file and opened it in Photoshop CS4 to do further editing.

When I edit images I typically use a lot of layers. This photo didn’t need too much work to it, so it’s not as complicated when it comes to my typical work-flow. I prefer to use adjustment layers to preserve the non-destructiveness as much as possible during the editing process … and so I can go back and fix anything I missed the first time around.

The first layer is a Levels Adjustment Layer – I named it “light” in my layers panel to the left (click here to view the actual RGB adjustments). One thing you’ll note is that, hi-lighted in yellow is the blending modes drop-down and I have it set to “luminosity“. I do this with my images so that I can do masking that will only affect one aspect of the adjusmtents, if necessary. In this particular image I didn’t want the red areas of the salmon and topping to be overly lightened (it was creating some ugly blotching in the darker red areas) so I used “SELECT –> Color Range…” to find the red areas, then I filled in the selection with black in the layer mask.

Next I added another Levels Adjustment Layer, changed the blend-mode to “color” and did some minor color editing. I used the far left slider on the “Red” and “Green” channels and brought them in slightly to the right until the colors looked balanced (click here to view the adjustments).

The third layer is a Black and White Adjustment Layer, the blend mode changed to “Soft Light” (I also will sometime use the “Overlay” blend mode”) and then dropped the opacity down to 20%. This will usually give a nice contrasty look to the image, and often will make the blacks stand out in the image more.

(If you want to learn more, please click here to view a quick two-minute video tutorial on this effect.)

The last thing I do in my images is add a sharpening layer. I prefer to use the “High Pass” filter and use masking to show only the part of the image I want sharpened, in this case the basil leaf furthest to the right. (I explain how to do this effect towards the end of this video tutorial, at about 5 minutes in.)

And that’s my editing process! I always save the un-flattened PSD version of the image, along with a full-res JPEG. Saving the PSD files eats up more space, but I have found it useful when I need to go back and re-edit a file (or do fun tutorials like this one).

Canon 7D, Canon 24-105 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/50th sec at ƒ/4, ISO 100

One of the most common challenges I have seen many new food photographers struggle with is getting proper white balance (colors) and also exposure (tones/brightness/contrast) in their food images. When we photograph people we usually have a skin tone to gauge what our white balance is, and since our minds naturally know what looks “right” it’s not too difficult to find the right balance. With food it’s different since the colors and tones can be whatever we make them to be, and sometimes it’s hard to get the image back to those bright, vivid colors we remembered photographing.

The image above is the photo straight out-of-the-camera (left) and edited version (right). It was photographed with window-light on the right and a large silver reflector on the left to fill in shadows. My editing on this was very simple: I corrected the white-balance in Adobe Lightroom (from the RAW file), then used a levels adjustment layer for the tones, a separate levels layer for color, and added a reduced-opacity B&W overlay layer to add some contrast (you can learn how to do that last step here).

So, how can you improve the white-balance in your images? Here are five tips to get you started:

1. Photograph in daylight-balanced light. Using the light in the kitchen, which is usually going to be tungsten or flourescent, is not your ideal light for food photography (or photography in general). Use window light or speedlights/strobes to get the correct color-temperature light and you will immediately see results.

2. Make sure your computer monitor is calibrated. There are a lot of relatively inexpensive calibration tools out there. I use a very simple “Spyder Express” – the newest one on the market (the Spyder Express 3) costs around $75. This is ideal if the majority of your work is displayed online or in a computer format.

3. Pre-set the white-balance in your camera. This can be done with a fancy tool like the Expodisc ($100) or with an inexpensive $5-10 gray card (you can also find them at your local camera store).

4. Shoot in RAW format. This will ensure that you can change your white balance in your editing software if you didn’t get it perfect out-of-camera (and 99% of the time you probably won’t).

5. Compare your before/after image. By comparing your original image to the edited version you will have a better idea of what edits are working and what still needs to be done. You can do this pretty easily by toggling your layer visibility in Photoshop … I have a short two-minute video on this topic on my blog here.

A lot of people use Twitter these days, and if you’re like me and a photographer then you enjoy finding out about cool photography-related blog posts, news articles, and images, and Twitter is a great place to discover them. Now, everyone has their own purpose for being on Twitter. Some people use it for informing the world about their personal life, or finding out about other people’s personal lives … lots of people use it for keeping up with their hobbies, and others use it for marketing, etc. I don’t really fit entirely into any of those categories (most people don’t) but I do my best to keep my tweets photography-related, with a few dabbles of other randomness in the mix. :)

First of all, you are free to use Twitter however you like and don’t feel like the below tips are a “requirement”. For me Twitter is like my work-place so I have a different perspective on how I manage my tweets, and so if your goal is like mine (to find and connect with other photographers on Twitter … and maybe gain some new followers along the way) then here are some tips that you might useful:

1. Un-lock your account. If I (or anyone else for that matter) can’t see your tweets  then there’s a really good chance that I won’t follow you.

2. Turn off auto-tweeting. If you use Facebook, that’s great, but if everytime you post to Facebook it pops up on Twitter and I have to go through 2-3 different clicks to get to what I thought was going to be something interesting, only to find out it was the same status update that was on Twitter, then I get annoyed. This also goes for everytime you advance a level in that oh-so-cool online game you’re playing. I really don’t care. ;)

3. Self-promotion is great, but don’t overdo it. A huge part of being on Twitter is to share our photography, right? Well, I also do my best to “spread the love” and share other photographer’s tips, images, blog posts, etc. I find things through random web searches, All-Top, and RSS feeds, and also try to re-tweet the stuff that I think is relevant, entertaining and/or useful.

4. Minimize your personal conversations. If all I see are random conversations between you and another person (or several for that matter) then it’s the same as being in an elevator listening to another person’s conversation when I have no idea what’s going on. Usually the “ignore” flag goes up and I move on. Replying to people is awesome, but when it goes on-and-on then your tweets are viewed as “diluted”. You want to try and maintain at least a 80/20 ratio … for every ten tweets you do try to keep about eight of them relevant to photography.

6. Link directly to what you want to share. Don’t link to your blog – link to your post. Also, try to only put one link per tweet (unless you are specific about where each link goes). And if you are tweeting on-and-on about something then be sure to link to what you are talking about! I can’t share your content if I don’t have anything to link to. :)

7. Link to your website in your profile. One of the best ways to learn about other photographers is to look at their blog. If you don’t have a blog, there’s a good chance that you have some sort of photo-sharing website (like Flickr or Smugmug), right? You can do this in your Twitter settings … and while you’re at it add some info to that mini-bio as well.

8. Use the crowd to your advantage. Are you in a conundrum and can’t Google your way to an answer? Jump on Twitter and do some crowd-sourcing! I’ve solved many problems through the help of some really awesome people online, and I’ve also found that most people are happy to share what they know to help you out. Don’t forget that the mirror looks both ways … do some Twitter-searching on topics you are good at and see if you can help someone else out as well. :)

9. Be yourself! These days it’s all about branding, and people want to see honest, open people be who they are. Share as much of your photographic life that you feel comfortable sharing, and throw in a TwitPic or two while you’re at it.

10. And, last but not least … follow me on Twitter! (Hehe, I just had to throw that one in) ;)

I recently discovered that my blog was mentioned on the January 13th episode of the “Learning Digital Photography” podcast. Erik Bernskiold was a guest on this week’s episode and chose my blog as his “pick”, and also said some very nice things about my blog and photography (*blushing*). :) Thank you so much!

Click here to view the “Learning Digital Photography” website, and click here to listen to the podcast on iTunes.

Canon 7D, Canon 24-105 ƒ/4L IS, 1/25th sec at ƒ/4

This photo was created with all natural-light: a North-facing window for main light on the right, and a large silver reflector on the left tilted towards the subject.

I’ve had this photo idea in my head for a few weeks now, and last night I decided to put it all together and photograph it. It took longer than a “normal” food shoot, since I was using a strobe as my light instead of natural window-light, but the part that took the longest was trying to arrange all of the lights in the background (my “bokeh” lights) so they fit well into the background.

The neatest thing about this is that it turned out exactly as I pre-visualized, which is always a treat. :)

The equipment used was an Alien Bee B1600 at the lowest power setting for the main light with a medium-size octabox, reflector on the left clamped to a tripod (gold-ish side facing the subject), a Canon 7D with a 70-200 f/4L IS (zoomed in to 200mm for all images), exposure set at 1/250th second at ƒ/5.6. I found the bokeh-lights at Hobby Lobby and strung them across a boom-stand. The background is a pop-up black/white reversible backdrop … I don’t use it too often but it worked perfectly for this setup.

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 ƒ/4L IS, 1/250th sec at ƒ/5.6