A skill that makes Claude direct a food or drink shoot the way a senior food photographer and a stylist plan one together. It starts from your menu and a few phone photos of the dishes. It maps every picture to where it will run, such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, a printed menu, Instagram or a label, and picks the hero angle for each dish with a reason. Toppings and count read overhead, height and layers read straight on, and a plated dish reads at 45 degrees. Then it writes the styling plan, one light setup you can copy, the props, and a shot list ordered around what melts or stops steaming. Afterwards it reviews the frames you bring back.
Five reference files sit behind it. One gives the angle for over thirty kinds of dish, with lenses, phone settings, light setups measured in feet and stops, and rules for plates and props. One covers styling and timing, such as how long a cheese pull or a scoop of ice cream lasts on set and how a stand-in plate buys time. The US file sets out the FTC's deception test, the soup marbles case, recent burger-size lawsuits and the FDA and USDA rules on pack pictures, each with its source and date. A worked example follows a fictional restaurant through every stage. Its main rule is that a dish you sell is shown real, at the served portion, on the plate it comes on.
It cannot take or generate photographs. It plans them, writes the brief and checks what you shoot. It offers image-tool prompts only for concept frames, never as the final picture of a dish you sell. The legal file is a working summary of US rules, not legal advice, and platform specs change, so check the upload page before a large batch. You get the most from it by attaching your menu, photos of the dishes as they are served, the served weights from your recipe cards and your plate sizes. Switch on code execution too, so Claude can measure pixel sizes and colour casts instead of guessing them.
Claude skill · version 1.0
Food photo direction
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In the download · 7 files
- SKILL.mdThe method Claude follows, in six stages: brief and use map, angles, styling, light and props, the shoot day, and review.
- README.mdHow to install it in claude.ai or Claude Code, how to start, and the licence.
- references/worked-example.mdA fictional restaurant taken through all six stages, with every output filled in.
- references/us-truth-in-advertising.mdUS rules and cases on food pictures in ads, menus and packaging (FTC, FDA, USDA), each with its source and the date checked.
- references/output-specs.mdPhoto specs for DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Google Business Profile and Meta ads, plus print sizes, with sources and dates.
- references/angles-and-light.mdThe hero angle for over thirty kinds of dish, lenses and phone settings, four light setups, surfaces and props.
Install it and begin
01Install it in Claude CodeTerminal mkdir -p ~/.claude/skillsunzip ~/Downloads/food-photo-direction.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/# Start it with /food-photo-direction. If this is your first skill, type /reload-skills once.On claude.ai there is nothing to unzip: upload the zip as it is. Every step is on Install and use a Claude skill.
02Your first message to ClaudeText Use the food photo direction skill. We are [RESTAURANT OR BRAND NAME] in [CITY, STATE]. We need photos of [NUMBER] dishes for [WHERE THEY WILL RUN, E.G. DOORDASH AND OUR MENU]. [WHO WILL SHOOT, E.G. ME ON AN IPHONE] will shoot on [SHOOT DATE]. Attached are our menu and photos of the dishes as we serve them. Start with the brief and tell me what is missing.Attach the menu (a PDF or a photo of it) and one phone photo of each dish as it is served. Served portion weights and plate sizes save a round of questions.
Try this
Direct three dishes in an afternoon
Pick three dishes from one menu: one flat (a pizza or a grain bowl), one tall (a burger or a layer cake) and one that melts or steams (ice cream, soup or a cheese pull). Run Stages 2 to 5 with the skill for those three only, shoot them by a window on a phone's 2x lens, then paste the frames back for the Stage 6 review.
Time: About two hours, including the shoot. You need: The menu and the served portion weight of each dish, a window without direct sun, a sheet of white foam board and a small tripod, Someone in the kitchen to plate on your call.
Look for
- Three different hero angles, each with a reason that names what the customer pays for.
- A product line for each dish that separates what is sold from the props and set helpers.
- A timing window and a stand-in plate for the dish that melts or steams.
- Questions from Claude about portions and plates, instead of figures it made up.
- Frames that pass the side-by-side test against a plate the kitchen made the normal way.
What to do it with
- ClaudeFree tier, paid above it
A language model that writes, edits, reads long documents and runs tools, including agents that work inside a codebase.
Bad at It is agreeable by default, so it will improve a bad idea instead of telling you it is bad. Ask it to argue against you and the quality of the answer changes.
- Claude CodeSubscription
An agent that reads a whole repository, edits files, runs the tests and explains what it changed.
Bad at It is fast enough to make a large mistake quickly. Work on a branch, read the diff, and never let it push. Watch the starting mode: on Pro, Max and Team plans it opens in auto mode, which Anthropic's own list says may read a .env file and send the key in it to the API that key belongs to. Switch it off.
- ColorCheckerSubscription
A printed chart shot at the start of a session so colour can be made objectively correct later.
Bad at Only works if somebody remembers to shoot it. Fades with age and must be replaced.
- Capture OneSubscription
Raw processing and tethered capture, with colour handling professionals prefer to the alternative.
Bad at Priced for working photographers and organised the way they think. A designer will find the catalogue alien.
- LightroomSubscription
Raw processing, colour and a catalogue, with masks that find skies and people by themselves.
Bad at Its denoise and its presets pull everything towards a current look, and that look dates.
Why it matters
Ask a chat for food photo tips and you get a list of clichés, plus tricks like mashed-potato ice cream with no word on when they mislead. Customers now hold the delivery photo next to the box, and the apps reject photos that look nothing like the order. This skill makes Claude choose an angle for each dish, time the shoot around what melts, and keep every picture of a sold dish true to the plate, with the rule or case behind each call.
- Type
- technique
- Period
- ongoing