Today I am sharing with you the ultimate food photo edit tutorial where I reveal every trick in my book to help you edit your pictures better in Photoshop.
Make sure Layers panel is open on the right (Windows, Layers)
Crop your image
Apply an auto Tone shift+ctrl L
Duplicate your layer ctrl J
In layers select soft light from drop down and adjust opacity to around 30%
Duplicate your layer ctrl J
In layers select overlay
Select brush tool and pick the color white
Select a size for the area you want to paint and lower harshness to zero
Paint in the areas you want to highlight
In the layers panel set your overlay at around 20% (I went back and set it at 15% later)
Open a Curves layer to adjust tonal range: add highlight by adding and moving one point on the top of the diagonal line. And add shadow by adding and moving one point on the bottom of the line. Don't overdue it.
Open a Vibrance layer, here I chose vibrance on the slider at 30 (avoid the saturation slider)
I am happy with the edit but I want to sharpen the image a bit. First step is to flatten all my layers
Duplicate your layer ctrl J
Turn your photo black and white by pressing crtl U
In layers select overlay
Go in Filter, Other, High Pass
In the High Pass window select a radius, usually around 1.5 to 3. Check preview. Press OK.
'Save as' with a new name (good to keep original just in case). And you are done!
Notes
Optional: add your watermark. And save for web (shift+alt+ctrl S) to reduce size to around 90 kb for the blog post so that it can load faster.
NOTE: every time I say open a ### layer, click the circle that is half dark half white in the menu in the bottom right . If you go here you create a layer for each modification, which means you are not destroying the original layer.