Not sure this is the right forum for this, although I was thinking with the discussion on web sites, etc...
Anyway, How is everyone photographing their cakes? I have a very good digital camera, but my cakes still look shiny and funny after I take photos of them. Should I set up lights instead of using a flash? Do you fix them up in Photoshop?
Thanks!
We take them with a nice background and some tulle. We make sure there is lots of light in the room. Then, we adjust the lighting on photoshop to make it optimal. Sometimes, they come out dark, so it is necessary to fix it to see the details. I think it makes all the difference in the world. People see a nicely photographed cake, and they automatically think "professional". I learned my tricks from Vik from www.outsideofthebox.ca. Her photos are all digital and very nicely presented. She takes them all herself. Check out her site for ideas.
I'm so glad to see this subject addressed, I am so photographicaly challenged it's not even funny!
Thanks for asking about it loriemoms
I learned my tricks from Vik from www.outsideofthebox.ca. Her photos are all digital and very nicely presented. She takes them all herself. Check out her site for ideas.
Wow, nice site!
A decent digital camera should also have some adjustments you need to get familiar with, such as incandescent (normal light bulb), fluorescent or sun light settings. It's a good idea to play with your camera and find out how to use these before you need to use them with a cake that's about to go out the door. Using the correct setting will make a world of difference to the final image.
Use the best image quality it can give you as well, likely a "tiff" format, as this capture a LOT more data in the picture than a jpeg format. It gives you a HUGE image when you're done (data size, not width/height huge) like 6 megs vs a jpg pic of 80k for the web. That also gives you a very crisp picture that you can throw through a graphics program to crop, adjust the brightness/contrast, rotate a bit if needed, and so on. If you start with a lower-grade jpg picture, there's more graininess to it and you won't have as much "info" in the picture to work with.
And if you have some detail on the cake, don't forget to get a close-up!
Set up a little corner of your house for cake pics; it doesn't need to be anything permanent or dedicated, just a corner where you can take your cake and gather the lights around easily. Not all cakes will be available during the daytime, so be sure you can get, say, the living room lights gathered around for night photos. Add a backdrop; keep a couple of plain bits of fabric in a couple of simple colours handy somewhere, you don't necessarily want to show the kitchen counter in all your shots.
Wow! Thanks for sharing the site! The cakes are awesome and the layout and design is so creative.
Excellend advice Rainbowz. I am a freelance photographer and shoot all of my cakes in natural light. My people too ~ LOL. Flash phogography is my last choice, but sometimes unavoidable.
In another recent thread, someone mentioned the freebie downloaded photo program PhotoFiltre. It is excellent for anyone who doesn't want to spend the $$$ for a high end program like Photoshop. It will do all that a cake photographer needs doing.
Is photoshop something you can download from the internet or do you have to go out and buy it?
Well, it's not free, more like $599, but you can get it on the Adobe.com website via instant download or mailed out. Of course, it'll be full cost there, so do look around some, there are probably other sources for it that will be cheaper. You can likely look on places like eBay for an older version as well which will do you just fine. It's currently at the "Photoshop CS2" level (version 9 actually) but if you can find an older Photoshop 5 or 6 or 7 for cheap, that would work just fine too.
But as Phoov noted above, there are certainly other photo manipulation programs out there. It may be a good idea to check places like download.com and versiontracker.com, these places have ratings for the stuff they provide so this would help you decide if a freebie or inexpensive program is a good deal. You do NOT need a high end program do clean up cake pics but you do want to have something that will help make your good pictures look even better.
I'm not great at taking pictures, but have found that holding a white sheet of paper underneath the flash helps GREATLY!!! The sheet of paper helps deflect the light from the cake, giving an indirect light source.
I don't have Photoshop, but I do have Photoshop Elements. It came with my digital camera and does all the basic stuff as the high-priced Photoshop. Even though Photoshop Elements came with my camera, Adobe sells it separately for MUCH less than Photoshop. I think the idea was to have an economical version of the high end product for consumers.
try picassa, from google!
That looks like a decent little program. And the price is most excellent!
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