Delivery App Photo Checklist

Start with the thumbnail, not the hero image

Most delivery app browsing happens in a vertical list of small square tiles. Before you polish anything, shrink your photo to roughly the size of a postage stamp on your phone screen and look at it from arm's length. If you cannot tell the protein from the side within two seconds, the photo will not work in a list.

Shoot closer than feels natural for a menu. A dish that fills about 70 to 80 percent of the frame reads clearly at small size; a plate photographed from a metre away leaves the food as a small island of colour in a wide table setting. For a burger, a bowl of ramen or a plate of biryani, a three-quarter angle at about 45 degrees shows height and topping at the same time. A flat overhead shot works better for pizza, salads and shared platters where the arrangement is the selling point.

Contrast does the rest. A pale dish on a pale plate on a pale table disappears in a thumbnail, so choose a surface that separates from the food: dark wood under light dumplings, slate under a golden pastry, a plain white plate under a dark stew.

• Fill most of the frame with the dish
• Use a 45 degree angle for stacked or plated food, overhead for flat dishes
• Pick a surface that contrasts with the food's colour
• Check the image at thumbnail size on a phone, not on a laptop

Crop for each app you use

Delivery apps display dish images in different shapes, and the same file will be cropped differently depending on where it appears: a square tile in a menu list, a wider banner in a promotion, a small circle in search results. If your dish sits at the edge of the frame, one of those crops will cut off the most recognizable part of it.

Shoot with breathing room around the plate so you have material to crop. Then export separate files: a 1:1 square for menu tiles, a 4:3 or 16:9 landscape version for banners and your own website, and a vertical 4:5 or 9:16 for Instagram and stories. Keep the dish centred and slightly below the middle of the frame, since some interfaces overlay text or a price at the top.

Do not add your own text, badges, discount callouts or logos inside the image. Platforms often overlay their own labels there, and baked-in text becomes unreadable or duplicated at small sizes. It also dates the photo the moment the offer ends.

Keep the portion honest

The fastest way to earn a bad review is a photo that shows a portion the kitchen does not deliver. Photograph the actual plate as it leaves the pass, with the standard garnish and the standard sides, not a styled version with extra protein arranged for the camera. If a dish is served in a container for delivery, shoot it in that container at least once so the customer sees what the box looks like.

Props should answer a question, not decorate. A hand holding a taco shows scale; a scattering of raw herbs that are not in the dish misleads. Keep cutlery, napkins and drinks out of the frame unless they are part of the order. For messy or saucy dishes, a slight drip or a visible texture is more convincing than a wiped plate, and it sets a realistic expectation about how the food travels.

• Shoot the standard serve, not an upgraded build
• Include the delivery container for at least one frame per dish
• Use props only when they communicate size or contents
• Avoid raw ingredients in the frame that are not in the dish

Light it so the food survives compression

Apps re-compress every image you upload, which flattens subtle colour and can turn a soft shadow into a muddy patch. Photograph in soft daylight near a window, with the light coming from the side or slightly behind the dish, and turn off overhead room lights that cast a yellow-green cast. A sheet of white paper or a white napkin on the opposite side bounces light back into the shadow side and keeps detail in dark sauces and charred edges.

Avoid direct sun, which blows out highlights on glazed surfaces and makes rice and cream look grey. If you shoot at night, one diffused light at about 45 degrees to the dish and a second bounce card is enough; phone flashes flatten texture and create a hard shadow behind the plate. Expose for the brightest part of the food, not the background, and check the result on the phone screen before you plate the next dish.

After export, compare the file on your computer with the same file on the phone. Compression artifacts show up first in fine detail: sesame seeds, herbs, crumb texture. If those disappear, the photo is too busy or too low in contrast for a small tile.

Run the pre-upload check

Before a photo goes into a menu, review it against the same short list every time. This is also the moment to confirm what the platform itself requires: some apps publish image guidance in their help centre, others do not publish pixel specs at all, and in that case the upload screen is the only reliable source for size limits and accepted formats. Check it once per platform and note the result in your own kitchen document.

Where a platform bans AI-generated images, shoot and upload your own real photograph of your own dish to that platform. Do not upload a synthetic or altered version of the dish there, and do not assume a tool's output will pass review. Keep the original camera file for every dish so you can re-export a different crop later without reshooting.

For your own channels, the website menu, a QR menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile and print, you have more freedom. FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and improves the light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social while keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes.

Keep the set consistent across the menu

A menu photographed over three years looks like three different restaurants. Pick one background, one angle family and one lighting setup, then reshoot only the dishes that fail the thumbnail test. Consistency matters most in the first screen of a menu, where customers compare four or five dishes side by side; a bright, clean set makes the whole menu feel cared for.

Schedule refreshes around menu changes rather than a calendar. When a dish is replaced, photograph the replacement in the same setup the day it launches. When a price or portion changes, recheck the photo against the new serve. Seasonal specials can be shot in a single batch with the same board and light so they slot into the existing grid without standing out.

• One background and one light setup for the core menu
• Reshoot only dishes that fail the thumbnail check
• Photograph new dishes on launch day, in the same setup
• Recheck the photo whenever the portion or recipe changes