5 Food Photo Editing Apps you Should be Using

One of the secrets to any successful blog or photo sharing social media account (i.e Instagram) is great food photos. It’s taken me years to figure out the best angles, lighting and staging necessary to create a good photo and I’m still learning new things from my friends every day. I’m lucky enough to have a really cool group of foodie friends that are willing to share their tips with me and feel like it’s my job (as your foodie friend) to pass them along to you!

My biggest frustration with food photography is how difficult it is to have my reader to see the food as I saw it in real life. Today, I’m going to show you how that is possible! Over the last couple months, I’ve gotten really into editing my photos to help them depict what I am actually seeing in real life and it’s been working out great. There are so many incredible photo editing apps out there and I believe each of them serves a purpose (depending on what you’re actually trying to do).

While I can’t get into a full tutorial of each of the apps, I can tell you my 5 of my favorite photo editing apps and what I use each of them for!

1) FaceTune: This app is for more than just smoothing out those under eye circles on your face (although it’s awesome for that)! I use it this app all the time to clean spots on the plate (patch tool), detail out some element of a dish (detail tool) or widen something that is appearing smaller in photographs (reshape tool). Facetune is a very powerful application so use it carefully or things might appear to be fake. If you can manage to use self-control then I can’t recommend it more for making your food photos pop!

2) Snapseed: This app is great at really fine tuning your image piece by piece. It comes with a variety of photo enhancements and special effects capabilities. For example, if one area of the photo came out too dim, you can selectively choose that area and brighten it up. It’s also a quick and easy to use app to tune your entire image and layer on different effects. My favorite tool with-in Snapseed is the ability to change the perspective in which the photo was taken. A lot of times I’m out to dinner with tons of bloggers and we’re all trying to get the best shot. As a result, I don’t necessarily always take the photo from the best angle. Snapseed can correct that! So cool.

3) VSCOcam: I’m sure you’ve all seen #VSCOcam on Instagram, right? Well up until recently, I hadn’t given it too much thought. One night I was out with my friend Sam (www.chicagofoodauthority.com and @chicagofoodauthority on Instagram) and she told me this was one of her go-to’s for photo editing. If you’ve checked out her photos, you know why I listened to her. She’s awesome! After downloading it, I fell in love. This app makes photo editing super simple with one click. They have all these incredible pre-loaded filters that make Instagram’s look like child’s play. Add on top of that all the standard tools and ability to purchase different filter collections and you have yourself a pretty all-inclusive photo editing app.

4) Camera +: This is my tried and true go-to application when I want to keep it simple. I actually love starting all my photos out in Camera + because it allows me to choose my “scene” (i.e what kind of photo is it). By starting out with the correct “scene”, I’m able to have a great base of lighting and focus. The app also has all the standard photo editing tools with-in the lab, it just doesn’t allow you to pick a selective spot on the photo to edit (you have to do it all at once).

5) Color Splash: Have you ever wondered how people create those really cool black and white images and manage to keep one object in color? Well, now you know! Using this app, you can easily do this yourself with any photo. I’m totally addicted to this app and find it to be the easiest to use of all the splash of color editing apps on the market. I guarantee you will have a lot of fun playing around with this one. It’s addicting!

So I know what you’re probably thinking…”That’s a lot of apps”! Guess what? You’re right, it is! The fact is, photo editing can be overwhelming. I recommend you choose one of the apps I mentioned, learn it inside and out and then try out another! Once you learn the strengths of each one, editing your food photos will be a breeze.

Love always,
Erica