Food Photography Tutorials : How To Edit A Photo In Google+

Happy Friday everyone! Today I want to share a tutorial on how to edit photos in Google+. I know many of you don’t have proper photo editing software, so this tutorial will really come in handy. Actually even if you do have software the Google+ editor is an easy way of editing a photo quickly.

Here’s the photo that we’ll be using for the tutorial. It is SOOC, or straight out of camera. The only change I made was to convert it to a JPG because I shoot in RAW. Let’s begin.

UPLOAD THE PHOTO:
Fist we log into our Google account, then click on Google+ icon. Once logged into G+, on left hand side find “Photos” icon, hover over it and click on “Add Photos”

Name your album or use existing album (I will create new one called Tutorial) and click on “Select photos from your computer” find the photo to upload, click it. You will be taken back to “Upload and Share photos”, now click created album and click skip tagging on the bottom bar.

Next click on the create album button. You’ll be prompted to “Share album” click cancel. Then will be redirected to Google+ main page.

Go back to the side bar “Photos” and click on “Albums”

You’ll be taken to your albums page, find the one you just uploaded to, mine is the “Tutorial” and click it.

Now that you’re on the album page find the photo you’ll be editing and click it, a new popup window shows up. Look for top left side “Edit Photo” and click it.

BASIC EDITS:

Now we are at the editing menu, first we start in Basic Edits section. Click on exposure and adjust until the photo looks right to you. Then click apply and move onto Colors section.

In “Colors” section you can make the photo colors more punchy or saturated and can also adjust the Temperature — this would be good if you have incorrect color balance. Heres what happens when we change them.

To the left and negative numbers makes a cooler photo — or adds green/blue tones. To the right creates a warmer or more orangy photo. I left the temperature at 0 and only adjusted the saturation a bit for more contrast, then clicked apply

Next we go down to “Resize”, because we want to make a small version for our blogs. So click on Resize and input the dimensions you’d like, and click apply.

Then we go back up to “Sharpen” section, first make sure your viewing it at 100% on the zoom window on bottom right hand side.

They give you two options for sharpening the “Sharpen” and “Unsharp Mask”. The first one is easiest and fastest way, the later gives you more control.
– For “Sharpen” the Sharpness controls sharpening, which takes away the soft fuzzyness of photos. The clarity does the same to a further extent but be carful as it can quickly make the photo look bad. Mine looked best at 12 sharpness and without clarity.
– For “Unsharp Mask” the Radius controls — you guessed it the sharpening radius. The strength is how much and clarity we discussed above. The best way to see what works for your photo is by sliding the options until you achieve the desired sharpness.

I choose to stick with the results of the Sharpen, so it was sharpness at 12, and then clicked apply.

EFFECTS:
Under the Effects section you can give your photo fun or goofy looks. I think that for food photos these filters really don’t apply — but you may feel otherwise.

DECORATE:
This section again is not really suited for food photos. But you may have fun with other subjects.

TEXT:
Many of us like to add text and or copyright notices to our photos, that’s where this section comes in handy. I was surprised with all the font options available, so you can really get creative.

Just type in your text in the designated box, click add and you’ll get this

First thing is to resize the text by hovering over the corner of the text and adjusting it to desired size. Then move it to the place on your photo you’d like.

To change the color, click in the Text Properties box, inside the white box and a droplet icon will show up, then hover over your photo to pick a color. Alternatively you can just click on the Font Color section and pick one there. But I like to choose from the photo’s palette.

Inside the Text Properties you can also use to make the text bold or italic, adjust the size and blending option. It is self-explanatory.

To Change the font simply go back to the Fonts section and click on the fonts until you find the one you like best. Make sure to adjust the size accordingly. Also if you want to go back and change the font or colors simply click on it and the Text Properties box will pop back up.

That’s it, now all we have to do is save our edited photo. So click on the blue Save button in the top right hand side.

A new screen will pop up asking if you want to replace your original photo with this edited one or save a new copy of it. I will replace mine because I already have a copy of the original unedited one on my computer’s hard drive.

DOWNLOAD A COPY:

Now your newly edited photo will show up on your album. Go back to your Picassa Albums, find the album your photo is in and click it. Click the photo, then under “Actions” you can download a copy of the edited photo to your computer.

ADD EDITED PHOTO TO YOUR WORDPRESS POST:
Simply upload the edited photo from your computer’s hard drive onto your post. The process is the same as any other time.

ADD EDITED PHOTO TO YOUR BLOGGER POST:
Create a new post and click on the photo icon. Select file from Picasa Web Albums, find the photo and click Add Selected photo. Your picture shows up in the blogpost as it normally would.

If you’d like to adjust the size simply click on the photo and choose the size, now the photo is set for your blog!

And here is the final side-by-side comparison. Pretty cool results for a free online app, huh?

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