I see so many beautiful cakes on this site and usually the ones that grab my attention the most are the ones with a backdrop - no icing bags or highchairs in the background! I'm usually lucky to get a picture of my cakes as I run out the door with them, so unless I get a little more efficient, a backdrop isn't gonna happen! So I tried to "paint" out the background in a couple of my pics. What do you think? Does it look any better than the original? Thanks for your opinions!

Actually, in my opinion, it does. Less distraction from the cake.

yep, I like it painted out. Great cake!

Thanks! I was thinking so too, but I wasn't sure if my paint-job turned it into a hack job!

yes, i just posted in the actual pick but definately more proferssional i think. i just use a black sheet slung over a chairsitting on my dinning table i place the cake infront of it ontop of a tin to elevate it then wrap the rest of the sheet around the tin to hide the tin i find this very effective and makes the cakes stand out and even the colours come up better in the photos as you can see the pink looks 'pinker' against solid black in your edited pic

I must say...I am now inspired to paint out my icing bags and high chairs. I have some great cakes, in some not-so-great locations.

If you look at THanh-thanh pics, as well...you will see great cakes and great photography. In fact...she makes you wonder what the heck her kitchen looks like.

I wish I was better at the photography part too. I take about a zillion pictures trying to find the right angle, get rid of glare, and get the flash just right. I seem to alway either have a flash spot on my cakes or they look really washed out. I have a decent digital camera...maybe the lighting in my kitchen is too harsh? Oh well...I'm no professional - photographer or baker! I only take the pictures for fun and I just bake for friends and family. That's why I'm always rushing - trying to get ready for the party that I'm supplying the cake for!

natural light is always best too, if i ever run late and take the pics te night before i hate them and always end up anpacking the cake and doing more, also take the photo as close to the cake as possible (unless you have a lovely backdrop you want to include) some of the best cake shots i have seen have been of only parts of the cake

Lol...just today after seeing more great pics on here, I decided to build a lightbox. Check out a super wasy way to makes one here:

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent/

A good picture makes a huuuuuge difference, especially if posting to a website for possible business, in my opinion. And so far, I can't take a picture to save my life. Maybe after I make my box, I'll have better looking pictures!

The reason I want my pictures to look better is not for more business - I don't need more family asking for free cakes! It just makes me feel good to go into my photos and see two more people looked at my cakes or someone left me a comment! That being said...I wish that when you modify pictures that they would show up in the "uploaded today" section on the homepage! Makes me want to delete and re-upload just so that people will see them again, looking slightly better. I know they are still far from wonderful, but they do look better with the clutter gone!

i can't find a member called THanh-thanh to see her backdrops?

Me either! lol That is the first thing I did when I read the post is look for her. I would liek to see her back drops too!

I think she just goes by TT or something like that. How do you search for a member?

You can search in the forum. Just click on forum and in purple it should say search, buddy list, Ignore List, Watched topics, Memberlist......click on this one "memberlist"...when you type in the member's user name and it should find it for u! Hope that helped....I am not very good at the whole step by step thing. lol.

Ok, finally found her! It is spelled ThanhThanh. Here's the link to her cakes...

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-photos-by-ThanhThanh.html

I couldn't find her by searching the member list, but I remembered that at Thanksgiving she had about a million cakes show up in the "Thanksgiving Favorites" on the homepage! So I searched the Thanksgiving album. Didn't take long to find one of her cakes!

I definitely like the one that you painted on. =o) If I didn't know any better, I would think there was a black backdrop there.

The one you painted looks great. I don't know how to do that. I just use a 3 sided black poster board.

Painting the background isn't too hard. I know that there are nice programs you can buy that would make it even easier, but I just use the "paint" application that came on my pc. I draw black rectangles to cover large areas quickly and then I outline my whole cake and board with the brush option. Then you just fill in any holes with the brush too. It doesn't work on all my old pictures but I have gone through and changed a bunch!