Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

March 11, 2010
40 comments

The following sliced fruits shots tutorial is by photographer and artist William van der Steen.

The tutorial will take you step by step toward creating an image similar to that wonderful sliced up banana.

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

here we go

Selecting Raw Material

The first thing is to select an object to work with. Any fruit or vegetable can work here, as long as it can be cut in a relatively clean way. Hard fruits and vegetables are the easiest to use. After I decided what kind of fruit or vegetable I’m going to use, I’m going to think about how this object is sliced the best way, some fruit is very soft and that doesn’t give you complete freedom on how to slice it.

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

Working Towards The Final Image

We need a way to make the fruit pieces seem like they fly in mid air. Most of the times I use toothpicks to hold the parts together. Later, those will be removed in editing.

The best way to place the fruit and toothpicks in space is to imagine what it would look like when the toothpicks are removed.

The next step is to carefully add the toothpicks, first to balance the fruit, then to add all the flying bits & pieces.

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

Some fruits and vegetables look best when they are wet. If you so desire, you can spray some water to make them look fresher.

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

Lighting

There are a few ways to light such a scene. I use a light tent to get some good diffused light. Actually, the tent is a simple cardboard box with holes and sketching paper on the sides and paper on the back. Building one is a quick and fun project.

In the setup that I use I have two halogen lights to light the tent. While the tent itself provides some diffusion, I bounce the light on the back and ceiling to get even more diffused light.

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

Try to place your object in a way that you don’t have to remove too much shadow from your toothpicks. Shadows are always hard to clone (remove) in photoshop especially when they have a soft border.

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

Post

Once I have a good image to work with, I’ll do some editing o Photoshop.

Aside some basic levels and color correction I need to remove the toothpicks. This is done by cloning close by object. If you’ve never done this thing before, there is a great and funny cloning tutorial here.

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

Just to get some creative juices flowing, here are some of my sliced fruit images along with the magic-removed images. (Hover for before/after images)

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

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Comments

Great tut. Should have been

March 11, 2010
Bernie Greene East Grinstead Sussex photographer

Great tut. Should have been obvious but wasn't so thanks a lot.

cloning solution

March 11, 2010
matt haines

Very nicely done! Really the hard work is in the set up and creative arrangement. The cloning part is (if you've done it right) the easy part. You might consider adding elements so that it's more apparent the fruit/veg are levitating. It's hard to tell on the tomato for instance, but with the kiwi it's dramatic.

One thing to try with the cloning: take a shot with the same lighting, but the fruit and toothpicks removed (and use a tripod so the image reference is the same). You might find that painting in parts of the background-only image might make getting rid of toothpick shadows easier.

re: cloning solution

March 13, 2010
Willieman

Hi Matt,

Thanks for this tip.
I always shoot with a tripod so I will certainly give your idea a try.

"One thing to try with the

March 16, 2010
dave e.

"One thing to try with the cloning: take a shot with the same lighting, but the fruit and toothpicks removed (and use a tripod so the image reference is the same). You might find that painting in parts of the background-only image might make getting rid of toothpick shadows easier."

This is how I've been doing it from the beginning. It is an incredible time and effort saver.

Nice tutorial. I'm going to

March 11, 2010
Charles

Nice tutorial. I'm going to have to try this tonight.

Sliced fruit

March 11, 2010
WillieMan

Thanks for the post.
The article looks great Udi.

William

Instead of water...

March 12, 2010
Monosodium

Try using Glycerine instead of water in the sprayer, you can pick it up at supermarkets or anywhere you get baking / cake decorating materials. It looks like water but is a lot more stable especially in a nice warm softbox.

Wow

March 12, 2010
Juno

What a wonderful idea. I will have to give this one a try!!!!

Thank you,

-J

try to spray a mixture of

March 12, 2010
ikmal.ibrahim

try to spray a mixture of water and corn syrup...it will make the water particles on the tomatoes retain much more longer...

just a bit of a nifty advice...

@ikmal.ibrahim and

March 13, 2010
Willieman

@ikmal.ibrahim and @Monosodium thanks for your advice I will try it next time.

Hm

March 12, 2010
Chris Savoie

Cool result!

Super tutorial. Love the new

March 12, 2010
Steve

Super tutorial. Love the new look.

Great artcile and really well

March 12, 2010
Anonymous

Great artcile and really well explained. Thank you!

Refreshingly simple, 3 thumbs up

March 12, 2010
hfng

Really great article. Simple to do and will try it out!

Good Tut!

March 12, 2010
Jon

Nicely presented too.

"Just to get some creative juices flowing..." Good one. :-p

After reading this I tried a

March 14, 2010
Maureen

After reading this I tried a shot with some strawberrys take a look if you like let me know what you think. http://www.flickr.com/photos/an_eyes_view/4429485999/

Regards Maureen

tutotial

March 14, 2010
jaap van Genderen

great job!

Thanks!

March 15, 2010
Edu Pérez

Nice article, I always wanted to know how those photographs where made; thanks!

And about the water effect... I think there are entire books dedicated to that technique.

nice one.

March 15, 2010
Ron Uriel

The banana is my favorite

Thanks for share with us :D

March 15, 2010
Tucunduva

Thanks for share with us :D

Wow!

March 15, 2010
Lisa

I definitely want to try that sometime soon! Thanks for the great tutorial!

fun tutorial

March 16, 2010
Eric

This is some great info and technique. Thanks for posting; I can't wait to try it out myself.

Thanks for the great idea

March 16, 2010
Krystal M

I just tried this out yesterday and I have to say that getting everything to stay up was kinda difficult, expecially the banana. It was fun though and I'm please with my results. Thanks a lot for the idea, I was kinda stumped what I was going to do for my current digital photo project.

Thank for the idea!

March 18, 2010
Niklas

Gonna try this out later on tonight, I'll be back with my own results!

Great tutorial!

March 18, 2010
Dave

Almost disappointed to read - like seeing the mechanics behind a magic trick, it always looks so mundane, once you know how it's done. Thanks for breaking the secret!

Wow nicely done and thanks

March 19, 2010
Sangeeth Priyanath

Wow nicely done and thanks for sharing your knowledge. it is very helpful to me.

Great Article!

March 21, 2010
Mike Glover

This has been very helpful to me.

I've decided not to use fruit for my attempt.

Check it out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37968758@N05/4450825534/

I really thought this was a

March 23, 2010
Tiana Pierce

I really thought this was a cool concept. I think this was probably very difficult but i do think it is a great idea. I liked this work. My favorite was the Kiwi.