steps to achieve these "magazine"-like looks

[tigerbalm]

Hi there,
I'd like some help in breaking down the steps and tools that might have been used to achieve these looks:




(photos by Katie Quinn Davis)

I know some photoshop basics such as creating new adjustment layers, changing the brightness, contrast, selective color, and recently - fiddling with curves. But beyond that, I am lost. I really love how these photos have that kind of film-like quality to them even though they were captured with a dslr. Could someone please give me some pointers on how to go about achieving the same look? What tools should I learn how to use? What are the settings that I should start off with? Are there presets, plugins, filters, etc out there that would also give me these effects?

I know a big part of it has to do with the lighting set up and I'm pretty solid when it comes to that. Just need major help in post-processing/touching up. Most of my photos are of food as well so I'd really like to learn how to make them look more like those found in magazines and cookbooks. Thank you so much in advance!

[Hoogle]

I would say this has minimal post processing just colour correction if you ask me.. You could try getting your image making sure the white balance is correct do simple adjustments like levels exposure and add some vibrance. Create 1 or 2 black and white adjustment layers but set the layer blend mode to luminosity so it does not actually change the image to black and white but that gives you a good basis to enhance each colour individually.

[Hoogle]

here is just a quick example from a fairly poor image from google

[tigerbalm]

Edit: Also, these two additional ones:
The first of the picnic was shot outside, in what I believe was just natural light, but the end result is pretty blown out. Would adjusting just the exposure in PS give this effect?

And the one of the jars...you can see the textures after zooming in. It just looks...tweaked?

[tigerbalm]

Oh, thanks Hoogleman for the quick reply! Hmm, is there any way to adjust the exposure to get the brighter whites in the background without blowing out the items in the foreground/center? How would I ensure that the green macaron doesn't look too overexposed?

[Hoogle]

you could do an exposure adjustment layer and then with a black brush paint it out where you dont want it or set the brush to 50% opacity and paint half of the adjustment out. Also a lot of it may be corrected using camera raw and the right white balance settings