San Jose Menu Photography for Print, QR Menus and Delivery Apps

Plan the shoot around San Jose daylight

San Jose is generous with daylight in summer and tight in winter. Around the June solstice the city gets roughly 14 h 35 min of light, with the noon sun about 76 degrees above the horizon. Around the December solstice that drops to about 9 h 25 min and the noon sun sits at only about 29 degrees. Shoot indoors near a window and those numbers decide when you can work without artificial light.

In summer, high sun means indirect window light is strong and blue-ish from mid-morning to late afternoon. Use a north-facing window, or a south or west window with a diffusion sheet or a plain white curtain, and shoot between about 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. when the light is steady. In winter, the low sun rakes deep into rooms, so a window that is unusable in June may be your best light in January. Book winter shoots between about 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., when the sun is closest to its peak, and keep the table about 1 m back from the glass so the light falls off softly.

Batch consistency depends on shooting the whole menu in one or two sittings rather than a few dishes a week. Pick a window and a time of day, and repeat that setup for every session so a dish shot in March sits next to one shot in September without a visible seam.

• June: indirect window light, roughly 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., diffusion on sunny exposures
• December: direct low sun, roughly 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., table 1 m from the glass
• Same table, same distance, same time of day for every batch session
• Overcast days are the easiest: soft, even light all day

Build one batch setup and keep it fixed

A full-menu shoot fails on variation, not on any single photo. Lock a small number of variables and repeat them: camera height, lens distance, background, and the angle you use per dish type. A 45-degree angle flatters bowls, sandwiches and plated entrees because it shows both the surface and the depth. A straight overhead 90-degree shot works for pizzas, shared platters and anything where the arrangement is the point. Keep one background for the whole menu, a neutral surface or a plain wood board, so the grid reads as a set.

Work in dish families. Shoot all the bowls together, then all the sandwiches, then all the drinks, cleaning and re-plating between items. Keep a printed shot list in menu order and tick items off as they are captured, so nothing is missed and nothing is shot twice. Plate only what the kitchen actually serves: same portion, same garnish, same bowl. If a photo shows three dumplings and the order arrives with four, the image is wrong no matter how good the light is.

For drinks and anything glossy, a slight side angle at about 30 to 45 degrees avoids a flat reflection in the glass. Shoot a few frames per item, changing only the small details: a rotated bowl, a wiped rim, a repositioned garnish.

• One camera height and one distance for the whole menu
• 45 degrees for bowls and plated dishes, 90 degrees overhead for pizzas and platters
• One background surface across every item
• Shoot in menu order with a printed shot list
• Plate the real portion, garnish and vessel

Name files so photos stay tied to the menu

The moment a menu has more than about 30 items, file names become the system that keeps photos correct. Use a consistent pattern that starts with the menu category, then the item, then the version: for example entree_pho-tai_v2.jpg or drinks_house-lemonade_v1.jpg. Lowercase, hyphens instead of spaces, no accents or special characters. The version number lets you replace a photo without overwriting the old one, which matters when a dish changes.

Keep the photos in folders that mirror the menu sections, and keep a simple spreadsheet with one row per item: item name, menu section, file name, date shot, and whether the recipe or portion changed since. When the kitchen changes a portion, a garnish or a sauce, the row gets a new version number and the old photo is retired. This is also how you stay compliant with US menu labeling rules: chains with 20 or more locations must show calorie counts for standard menu items, and FDA guidance covers online menus as well as menu boards. A photo must match the item the calories describe, so a swapped photo needs a calorie check at the same time.

Export two masters per item: a high-resolution version for print and a compressed web version for the QR menu and delivery listings. Name them with the same stem so they never get separated.

Match each surface: print, QR menu and delivery apps

The same dish photo will be cropped differently on every surface, so frame with room to spare. Center the dish and leave a margin around the plate: that way a square crop for a delivery tile, a wide crop for a printed banner and a tall crop for a phone screen all work from one master. Keep the dish's key features inside the middle of the frame, not near the edges.

For delivery apps, check the current image requirements on the upload screen before you export. Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub do not publish a single fixed pixel spec that applies everywhere, so the upload screen is the authority. This site keeps spec pages for Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub and BentoBox covering the United States, which are useful for orientation, but confirm against the live uploader.

Print has its own rules: images need far more resolution than a screen, and colors shift on paper, so proof one page before committing the whole menu. QR menus are read on phones at arm's length, so a simple, well-lit square image beats a detailed wide shot. Keep the printed menu, the QR menu and the delivery listings on the same photo versions, and update all three when a dish changes.

Keep photos in sync with menu changes

A menu is never finished. Seasonal specials, price changes and sold-out items mean the photos drift out of date faster than most kitchens expect. Build a short monthly routine: walk the menu section by section, compare each listing against its photo file, and flag anything that no longer matches. Replace flagged photos in the next batch session rather than shooting one-offs, so the set stays consistent.

When a dish is discontinued, remove the photo from every surface at once: print, QR menu, delivery listings and your own website. A stale photo of a dish you no longer serve is worse than no photo, because it sets an expectation the kitchen cannot meet. Keep retired files in an archive folder rather than deleting them, in case the dish returns.

For the restaurant's own channels, a photo editing tool can speed this up: FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social, keeping the food as it is, and delivers every photo as a kit of sizes. Use it to fill gaps between batch sessions, not to replace them.