Today, I’m sharing some  before and after pics from my photoshoot for Baked Republic. I had this gig towards the end of March on a day when the rain was pouring harder than I’ve seen it in a very long time. It was torrential! 

Gary and I set up the photoshoot in a garage in the back of the pastry shop in the inner west of Sydney. Let me tell you the conditions were not ideal. The space was filled with boxes and paper cups and cooking utensils and a myriad of various odds and ends relating to a food outlet. We moved shelves and boxes and cartons and cases in order to make way for a dedicated space in which we could set up our lights and equipment and table and backdrops. There was light at the end of the tunnel - you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Yes, the delicious pastries, tarts and excellent coffee made up for the makeshift photography studio (I use the term studio very loosely!) If you’re in Sydney, check out Baked Republic. They have the most exquisite pastries, tarts and cakes. My favourites are their almond croissants and their donuts. 

Fast forward - the shoot went well and I delivered a bunch of images to Baked Republic, to be used on their menus (hence the minimal to no props) and socials. 

So, rather than sharing all my photos of drool-worthy pastries, cakes and tarts, I thought I’d share some of my before and after images, i.e before and after editing. My before pics are straight out of the camera and my after ones are images I edited using both Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.  For more before and afters, check out a previous post.

This is what cruffins look like. 😍😍😍

Eye for detail is everything. In the first pic, I’ve highlighted the glaring little imperfections on the chocolate tart. These were fixed up in photoshop.

We like our vanilla cream mousse fillings smooth with no random crumbs, don't we?

We want our tiny drops of condensation even, yeah? And blueberries are a lush blue, aren’t they?

And our pink glazes should be bright and glowy.

The blueberry, lemon and mascapone tart is the hero, don’t you think?

Let’s get rid of the little distractions, shall we? And while we’re at it, let’s do a bit of brightening as well.

Lightroom is a great editing program that’s quite intuitive and can transform an image from meh to wow! When working on food images, the most common features I use in Lightroom are: 

• white balance

• exposure

• contrast

• hsl - hue, saturation, luminance

• sharpening

• crop and straightening

If the images need further refinement or tweaking or let’s face it, a full overhaul, I use Photoshop - the big daddy of post-production that comes with a huge learning curve.

I’m self-taught in both applications.