Food Shutter Bug Club (Part 1)

[Dakki]

How's this?

[ScottyBoy]

Heh, well if everyone else is giving it a go... Cooled it down, sharpened and levels adjusted in Aperture.

[Holly Moore]

Thanks all. I tried again in Photoshop, starting from a copy of the raw data in jpg format. I selected curves and used the preset "lighten" option and then went to color balance and stepped down the blue and stepped up the red - both just a little bit.

[ScottyBoy]

Oh well yeah...having access to the raw file would help. I was wondering why the original picture was of such low quality.

[Holly Moore]

That's why I fessed up to having access to the raw jpg. The original file is too big to upload to eGullet. I looked through the approaches taken here with the pic and then took a second stab. The info from the thread was a big help in pointing me in the right direction - or at least a more right direction.

[prasantrin]

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/food-photography-four-manual-settings-you-need-to-know-for-shooting-food/

Very useful basic info regarding camera settings for food photography, especially about white balance.

Andrew Scrivani has an ongoing series of food photography tips as part of the NYTimes blogs. Worth reading if you're interested in food photography.

[dcarch]

Much better.

What do you think? Need more green for the pea shoots? less red for the fish? whiter background?

dcarch

[ScottyBoy]

Looks great to me, just counted 7 times your little picture has show up on this page

[Holly Moore]

Looks great to me, just counted 7 times your little picture has show up on this page

Exposed, I am. Of what, I don't know.

[ScottyBoy]

My alter ego Captain Obvious sometimes shows up to the forum.

[Holly Moore]

Huh? Not sure what Captain Obvious has been snorting and no idea what is being implied, but I received a bunch of solid advice - kinda the purpose of this thread.

[robirdstx]

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/food-photography-four-manual-settings-you-need-to-know-for-shooting-food/

Very useful basic info regarding camera settings for food photography, especially about white balance.

Andrew Scrivani has an ongoing series of food photography tips as part of the NYTimes blogs. Worth reading if you're interested in food photography.

Thank you so much for this link. I did some more searching on "white balance" and found this site here.

[ScottyBoy]

Huh? Not sure what Captain Obvious has been snorting and no idea what is being implied, but I received a bunch of solid advice - kinda the purpose of this thread.

There is some crazy miscommunication going on here. I just pointed out the obvious (all the pictures of tuna) then called myself out in the next post as quoting the obvious. That's all, just here to give advice like everyone else.

[Blether]

... There is some crazy miscommunication going on here. I just pointed out the obvious (all the pictures of tuna) then called myself out in the next post as quoting the obvious. That's all, just here to give advice like everyone else.

And caper about from time to time ?

[ScottyBoy]

[percival]

Sicilian-style crema rinforzata gelato with Hawaiian candied ginger. Recipe on my blog.

Nikon D3000, AF-S 35mm f/1.8G @ f/2.5, ISO 100. No light box, no fill, no flash. Just foam board on my kitchen countertop and horrid neon lights -- splash tile in the background. I post white balanced off the ring of the bowl. First try on setting it up, just with a teaspoon. Cut up some extra candied ginger to sprinkle on the top, then put the spoon in the bowl.

If I weren't so tired, I would have dug out my macro light and my 60mm f2.0 macro and gone for a brighter diffused creamy white porcelain look.

[Rico]

All right, I'm becoming obsessed.

I've got a question about this one - actually, a couple of questions:

First - this is pan-fried halibut. Does that look like you'd want halibut to look after cutting into it? I really don't know; I've never made halibut before. It was cooked, but to me the photo looks undercooked.

Second - The fork. Good or bad? It's in front of the main object, so I don't know if the viewer's like 'hey! a fork and some sort of fish stick! That must be some sort of social commentary or something!' When it's really just a picture of halibut.

Thoughts?

Edited to add the thing about it being cooked

Edited October 13, 2010 by Rico (log)

[ScottyBoy]

You're right that for halibut it looks undercooked but if you enjoyed it, it flaked and it was cooked then there ya go. To me, fork = no good. I don't like to put anything BUT the food in my shots hence the white plates, no garnish and a white background. The piece is so long that maybe if you had cut it in the middle then offset stacked the pieces it might be a little better. That's my $.02 and all your photos look a x1000 better keep it up!

[Rico]

Thanks for the kind words, ScottyBoy, and for the advice. I completely agree with it, and the idea of cutting it in the middle and stacking it is a solid one. I suppose that picture is just going to have to be re-taken with a new batch of fish. I'd be disappointed about that ... but it was really tasty.

[Holly Moore]

For the last ten years I've used a program from a now defunct company to compress pics before uploading to my web site. I process the pics the Photoshop and then run them through the compression process to get them really small, byte-wise. Alas, my laptop died, and I can't find the cd to load my old software for pic compression onto my new laptop.

A couple of questions,

1. When I adjust image size in Photoshop the pics are still fairly large. Is there a way to ultra-compress in Photoshop?

2. What is a good software compression program to use in lieu of the one I have been using? Freeware would be nice.

Thanks.

[prasantrin]

I use the free version of VSO Image Resizer. It's very easy to use, and you can do a few other things with it other than resizing your pictures. The only thing I don't like is that every time I open it, I get the little pop up asking me if I want to continue with the free version or upgrade. But I suppose it's a small price to pay for something that's free.

[Blether]

... 1. When I adjust image size in Photoshop the pics are still fairly large. Is there a way to ultra-compress in Photoshop? ...

Holly, when you save your photo in Photoshop, don't you get the 'JPEG Options' dialogue ? Yes, you can use "Image - Image Size" to resize the whole picture. But the 'Quality' part of 'JPEG options', with the slider and the level number (1 to 12 ?), is I believe the same as the type of compression you're talking about.

[philadining]

Yeah, Holly, as Blether said, there are plenty of ways to resize your photos within Photoshop, you don't need another program. After you've done all your tweaking to the shot, I'd save an un-compressed version of it, either as a photoshop file or maybe a tiff, in case you want to do something with it for print. yes, this eats up a lot of disc space. Get over it. Big hard drives are cheap these days, get a large one, or two, or a RAID set to mirror (RAID level 1.)

Then, if you're posting to the web, go to the Image menu, choose Image Size, and change it to the size you desire: 72 dpi for the web, then whatever actual dimensions you want in pixels or inches or whatever dimension you want. Be sure to check the Resample box, along with the Constrain Proportions box.

Then, after it's been resampled, you may want to do some sharpening... or not...

Then, if you choose "File>>Save for Web & Devices" you'll get a dialog that allows you to choose the image type and tweak the amount of compression you want, giving you a before and after pane that shows the consequences of your choices, both visually and as a file size.

Also - regarding your white-balance issues - you'll have LOTS more control if you shoot RAW, and then upon opening the RAW file, use that dialog to adjust the color temperature until the whites are white. That gives you much more to tweak than the post-processing adjustments of levels, or curves, or color balance, or hue and saturation. The auto button often gets close, but you'll still usually want to tweak the blue-yellow (temperature) slider a bit, and then, you almost always need to adjust the exposure setting, and/or the black levels.

Of course it's even better to have the white balance set right in the camera, but the real-world lighting conditions don't always play along. You should try to avoid having different light sources with different color temperatures hitting your subject at the same time. If your plate is being lit by an incandescent lamp, but you're also sitting near the window, and it's simultaneously being lit by sunlight, you'll end up with parts of the shot too yellow or too blue, and there's no easy fix for that...

Edited October 14, 2010 by philadining (log)

[percival]

One of the prettier breakfasts -- from last week. Annatto rice, shrimp peas carrots scramble. I actually had breakfast first, then shot the photo with leftovers, so the eggs are overcooked/dry, and they don't have the nice steamy look. Annatto gives great color, though I'm not fond of the smell. Fortunately that goes away by the time it's served. The image itself is heavily cropped. It was taken with my new Sony NEX-5 and an antique Canon Serenar 50mm 1.9 lens, which arrived the night before. Wanted to try it out. Turns out it's very soft, which was expected, but it doesn't really work for macros: closest focal distance is ~3 feet.

[percival]

[blah, double post...]

For photo editing, I highly recommend Adobe Lightroom 3.2 -- there's really no better tool out there for photo editing. Not only feature-wise, but simplicity as well. Far better than Photoshop. And Lightroom handles RAWs better than even OEM software.

Edited October 14, 2010 by percival (log)