You spent three hours matching a dusty rose and the photo shows salmon. Color accuracy is the hardest part of food photography and the most important for a baker, because clients order from your pictures.
Window light, and nothing else
The fastest improvement available to you: shoot beside a large window, in daylight, with every artificial light in the room switched off.
Mixed lighting is the main cause of wrong colors. Warm kitchen bulbs and cool daylight together give your camera contradictory information and it splits the difference badly.
- Best: bright but indirect daylight, such as an overcast day or a north-facing window
- Avoid: direct sunlight, which blows out highlights and distorts saturation
- Never: the phone flash
Shoot in the middle of the day
Early morning and late afternoon light is warm and orange, which shifts every color in the frame. Late morning to early afternoon gives you the most neutral light.
Include something white
Put a genuinely white object in the frame, a plate, a card, a cloth. It gives your camera a reference for neutral, and it gives you a reference when editing: if the white looks yellow or blue in the photo, the whole image is off.
Lock exposure and focus
On most phones, tap and hold on the subject to lock focus and exposure. Then adjust brightness with the slider that appears. This stops the camera re-guessing between shots and giving you an inconsistent set.
Keep backgrounds neutral
Colored surfaces reflect onto your cake. A blue tablecloth will cool every color above it.
- White, grey, pale wood and marble are safe
- Matte beats glossy, reflections distort color
- Stay consistent, since a recognizable background makes your feed look coherent
Edit conservatively
The temptation is to crank saturation. Resist it, because you are effectively promising a color you cannot deliver.
- Adjust white balance first until whites look white
- Correct exposure so the cake is not underexposed
- Leave saturation alone, or nearly
- Compare to the real cake on your screen before posting
Build a repeatable setup
Mark a spot near your window. Same surface, same background, same time of day, phone on a small tripod. A repeatable setup means every photo matches, your feed looks professional, and photographing an order takes five minutes instead of thirty.
Photograph every order
Before it leaves. No exceptions. The cake is gone forever the moment it goes out the door, and a client photo taken in a dim reception hall will not sell anything.
Color With Confidence
Yeast Bakers is an Authorized Dealer for Colour Mill, so every bottle you buy from us is genuine stock. Shop the full Colour Mill oil blend range, free shipping on orders over $25.