Menu Photography in Prague: Full-Menu Consistency for Print, QR and Delivery

Decide the crops before you cook anything

Start from the formats, not the food. A printed menu typically needs a wide horizontal crop, a QR menu reads best at 4:5 or 1:1 on a phone, and delivery app tiles are square or near-square and small. Google Business Profile and Instagram want their own shapes again. If you shoot one loose horizontal frame per dish with the food centered and generous empty space around the plate, you can crop to all of those later without losing the rim of the plate.

This matters most for Czech plates. Svíčková with dumplings, roast pork with cabbage and knedlíky spread wide across the plate, and a tight square crop can cut the dumplings off. Frame those dishes from slightly higher, around 45 degrees, so the whole plate fits inside a square. Tall stacked dishes such as a burger or a layered dessert are better at eye level, roughly 10 to 15 degrees above the table, because a top-down shot flattens them.

Shoot each dish on the same background and surface all day. A neutral mid-grey board or a plain dark wood surface keeps the menu looking like one set rather than a collection of snapshots. Avoid the restaurant's branded tablecloth as the background for every dish, because it competes with the food in a small tile.

• One loose horizontal master frame per dish, food centered, space at the edges
• Square-safe composition for wide plates: shoot at about 45 degrees
• Eye-level, about 10 to 15 degrees, for burgers and layered desserts
• Same surface and background for the whole menu

A seasonal shooting schedule using Prague window light

Prague's daylight swings hard between the solstices. Around the June solstice there are about 16 h 10 min of daylight and the noon sun sits about 63 degrees above the horizon. Around the December solstice that drops to about 7 h 50 min and the noon sun is only about 16 degrees above the horizon, which means low, raking light through windows for much of the day.

In summer, a south or west window delivers strong, high light from mid-morning to late afternoon. Use indirect window light with the dish placed about 1 m back from the glass, and shoot between roughly 9:00 and 11:00 or after 16:00, when the sun is not blasting straight in. In December, the low sun comes in almost horizontally, so the same window throws long shadows across the plate. Move the dish to a table where the window is to the side, not behind the camera, and shoot around midday when the light is at its highest and least raking.

Seasonal menus should be shot in the season they are sold. Winter dishes such as goulash and roast pork with cabbage belong in the December light, and lighter summer plates in the June light, so the photos match what the guest sees outside. Book the shoot day around the weather: overcast days give soft, even light all day and are the safest for a large batch.

• June: shoot 9:00 to 11:00 or after 16:00, dish about 1 m from the window
• December: shoot around midday, window to the side, watch for long shadows
• Overcast days: best for a full-menu batch, soft light from morning to afternoon
• Re-shoot seasonal items in the season they are sold

Batch shooting a full menu in one or two days

Group dishes by how they are made, not by where they sit on the menu. Cold items first (chlebíčky, salads, pickles), then fried, then roasted and stewed, then desserts. This lets the kitchen plate in waves and keeps hot food from waiting under lights while you adjust a camera.

Set a rhythm: about 10 to 15 minutes per dish including plating, a few angles and a quick check on the back of the camera. For a menu of 40 dishes that is a two-day shoot with time for reshoots. Keep a printed shot list on the pass and tick dishes off as they are captured, and photograph each dish's name card in the first frame so the file can be matched later.

Shoot three to five frames per dish: the master horizontal, a square-safe version, a close detail of texture, and one wider frame showing the side dishes. That is enough to cover print, QR and delivery without a second session. Do not chase perfection on every plate; consistency across the menu matters more than one hero shot.

Naming and storing files so the menu stays in sync

Agree a naming pattern before the shoot: menu section, dish name, version date. For example, mains-svickova-2025-11. Use the same dish name as the POS and the printed menu so nobody has to guess which file belongs to which line item. Avoid spaces and diacritics in file names if the files will be uploaded to a delivery portal, where accents sometimes break.

Keep one master folder per dish with the untouched original, the edited master and the exported crops. When a dish changes (new garnish, new plate, price change with a new portion), add a new version date rather than overwriting, so you can roll back if a platform rejects a crop.

Sync on a schedule. Review the photo library every time the menu changes, which for most Prague restaurants means seasonally plus whenever a daily or weekly special becomes permanent. Delete or archive photos of dishes you no longer sell, because an old photo on a delivery listing is worse than no photo.

• Pattern: section-dish-YYYY-MM, matching the POS name
• No spaces or diacritics in file names for uploads
• Keep original, edited master and crops in one dish folder
• Archive photos of discontinued dishes

Delivery apps, print and QR: where to check the rules

Delivery platforms in Czechia each have their own image requirements, and the exact pixel sizes are not always published. Where a platform does not publish pixel specs, check the upload screen in the partner portal, which usually shows the required dimensions and crop. Upload the square-safe crop first and check how it looks in the tile preview before publishing.

If a platform bans AI-generated images, do not upload generated or heavily altered food images there. Shoot and upload your own real photo of the dish instead. The same rule applies to any platform that asks for authentic photography of the actual menu item.

For the restaurant's own channels, a real photo of the dish can be improved for light, background and crop and delivered as a kit of sizes for the website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print. FoodPhoto does this from the restaurant's own photo, keeping the food as it is, and cannot guarantee approval by any platform. Use it for your own channels and keep the platform uploads to your own real photographs where required.