I’ve even seen “AI enthusiasts” admit that AI generated images of food look bad. Also, it’s not like you need to hire a graphics designer and professional photographer to take a decent looking photo of a burger and drop it into a Word document, so it’s not even like it’s saving them money.
So who the fuck is this for?
They don’t really NEED to.
As long as your food doesn’t look like shit just put it on a plate and shine a light on it. I’ve taken decent photos of food with my phone before. If you’re just sandwich shop or cafe you really don’t need a pro. Heck half the cafes I’ve been to don’t even have images of the food items at all.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I suspect that your photos are not actually advertisement quality 😅. In particular, I would assume that your phone is doing a lot of image processing on a crappy sensor, whereas a decent photographer should be able to use their camera (better sensor), lighting, and some better image processing to get a better image. Plus, your phone probably compresses the image before giving it to you.
Yeah, need is a bit too strong…but if you want to stand out from all the other local restaurants, it might make sense to hire a food photographer.
If the menu photos look like this, you know the food is gonna be good.
Food pictures on the menu have been my guiding star to good food and it hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Idgaf if you have the money to hire a professional food photographer (fake sounding job) to make your food look good, but you snap a quick pic of a plate that’s on the way out to be served? That shit is going to be fire basically guaranteed
I agree with you and I wish that was the majority opinion.
I’ve had to argue with some of my friends about this, they almost always want to go to the most generic, suburban-coded, petite bourgeois slop houses they see while I have to argue that it’s fine (actually better in most cases) for a restaurant to be a little rough around the edges. Like the kind of light shabbiness that comes from running a popular local restaurant for 15+ years. Those places are usually pretty busy while with the pristine place with a faux-industrial decorating motif are deserted, expensive, and bland as fuck
It’s like how 3.6 stars is the sweet spot for restaurant ratings.
Crackers care way too much about staff behavior, things looking really bland and sterile like a Better Homes & Gardens cover, and other bullshit that has nothing to do with the quality of the food.
CW: egg
This is on my iPhone
Oooh that looks good 😋. If I was running a mom and pop place then yeah that would look pretty good on my menu, but I believe it is compressed (the magic of JPEG is that it’s quite challenging to spot for natural images; I’m going based off the filename), which is technically not ideal for graphic design.
But if I was running a chain or corporate-facing restaurant, I would probably hire you to retake that photo with a better camera, better lighting, and a team of artists to make your food look better than life.
Frankly, it’s a different approach. Your photo is good, but for advertising, people are conditioned to prefer better-than-real photos of food. Personally I prefer candid photos of real food like yours, but unfortunately our opinion is in the minority.
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There’s a sandwich shop near me I’ve eaten at a few times. There sandwiches are okay and I assume I could take a picture of one and make it look appetizing with just my phone. They put out an AI menu recently and it makes all the food look like it’s covered in ants.
Okay yeah, that’s probably just fully buying into the slop. That’s pretty bad. I was thinking more like fast food chains.
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