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Seattle Part II: What I taught

2012 June 19
by admin

So, really, the only reason I flew all the way from South Carolina to Seattle and back in a three day span was because my session proposal for speaking at BlogHerFood 2012 was accepted.  Bridget from The Way the Cookie Crumbles and I submitted a proposal entitled

Visuals: Simple Post-Processing for Food Photography: Free, Cheap, and Easy Tools [Beginning]

As Bridget said in her first BlogHerFood round up we really didn’t think we’d get accepted as speakers.  I was beyond pumped to learn that we had!

In this post, I’ll go over the content that Bridget and I taught our crowd since you probably weren’t there ;-)

BHFcollages

(photos above taken at Pike Place Market in Seattle)

Bridget and I presented in the last time slot of the two day conference.  So we had plenty of time to sit in on other sessions, enjoy the tastiness of Seattle, and goof around at Pike Place Market.

pikeplace

There is an abbreviated dialogue of our presentation along with two handouts located at the liveblog page for BlogHerFood here.

presentation

(Bridget – left, me – right; photo credit: What’s Cookin’, Chicago?)

Bridget started out by explaining what the goal of simple food photography editing is: you cannot turn a poorly composed, badly lit photo into something gorgeous.  With these editing tools, you can turn a photo with good bones into a photo with a great body.  Give the presentation below a moment to load and walk through it at your own pace to discover what we taught.

BHF 2012 visuals: simple post processing on Prezi

The second main task of our presentation was to teach you the 10 steps in successfully editing a food photograph.  Since Bridget guided that discussion, head on over to her blog to read her wrap up of that part of the presentation.

My portion of the presentation covered our top free software recommendations for making the edits mentioned by Bridget.  The key features are outlined in the presentation above but I’ll put it in a nutshell below.

GIMP

-GIMP (www.gimp.org) is the most complex and versatile photo editing program we covered.

  • It does the best job of completing the actions taught above
  • It is a program downloaded to your hard drive (the only one with this feature mentioned here)
  • GIMP is the most versatile of the programs and allows for the most user control
  • It may be intimidating or hard to learn, but many help forums and YouTube videos exist to help.

pixlr

-Pixlr (www.pixlr.com) is very similar to GIMP but is web based.

  • It has a few bugs in it when performing tasks, but nothing major.
  • Of the web-based programs it allows most user control and complex editing tasks

picmonkey

-If you are new to editing photos, the most user friendly program is PicMonkey (www.picmonkey.com)

  • The language is straightforward
  • The controls are easy to use
  • You may find yourself outgrowing PicMonkey quickly but it is a great starting point if you’ve never edited photos

g+

-Google+ Creative Kit is the same as PicMonkey except that it

  • It requires a Google membership
  • It allows you to save edited pictures ‘in the cloud’

If you have any specific questions about any of the steps in editing a photo or the software covered above, please comment below so that others can benefit from your question and answer. 

Bridget and I are so thankful we were given the opportunity to speak at BlogHerFood 2012.  The conference was a blast and I highly recommend it – speaker or not!

 

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  • Hezzi-D

    This was so helpful.  I currently use PicMonkey but I do have GIMP downloaded on my computer-it looks like I may need to learn how to use it while I’m off for the summer.  Thanks!

  • Tastetastic Voyage

    Thanks for posting this! I can’t wait to watch this presentation. I’m definitely trying to improve my photography skills and your teachings will be very helpful, I’m sure. 

  • Kate

    You are so famous!

  • http://www.everydaymaven.com/ Alyssa (EverydayMaven)

    I was bummed I missed this session – great virtual recap! And so nice to have met you at BHF :)

  • http://www.againstallgrain.com/ Danielle

    Have you ever used Pixelmator for macs? It’s only $14.99 but I’m wondering if it’s worth buying. 

    • Anonymous

      Great question. I have not used it. These programs mentioned above are so versatile and make great edits all for free, I’m not sure I’d invest even $15 without trying out one or two of these programs above first.