Serve up mouth-watering pictures with these 5 best camera settings on Google Pixel Camera.

Pixel’s AI-powered camera automatically optimises brightness, colour and more for any shooting condition. Just take a picture and Pixel will capture what you see with vivid detail. You can also tweak settings like exposure and white balance to suit your liking before you hit click.

Discover the best features and settings on your Pixel Camera below, along with some top shooting tips, to make your food and trinket photos a real treat.

Portrait Mode on Google Pixel is your secret to making food look irresistible. This smart feature blurs the background to create a sense of depth while making your dish the star of the show. This feature is especially useful in restaurants, where other diners might appear mid-bite in your background.

Here’s how to take great food photos in Portrait Mode:

• Open the Camera app on your Pixel.

• Find the menu below the shutter button and tap Portrait.

• Press the shutter. It's that easy!

Never miss a moment, whether it's the perfect pour or the sizzle on the grill. Your Google Pixel lets you capture stunning photos even while you're recording video, which allows you to get both static photo and video versions.

Here's how to do it:

• Open the Camera app: Find the Camera icon on your home screen or in your app drawer.

• Switch to Video mode: Tap the 'Video' option at the bottom of the screen.

• Start Recording: Tap the red record button to begin filming your delicious subject in action.

• Snap a Photo: While the video is recording, simply tap the white camera icon that appears on your screen. Your Pixel will instantly capture a high-quality still photo without interrupting your video.

Top tip: Shooting video in 4K will mean even higher quality images, perfect for knocking the socks off your socials. You can check this setting in Camera → Video → Settings → Resolution → Choose 4k or UHD, or tap on FHD if it is displayed.

Knowing where the light is coming from is key to making your food look delicious in pictures. When photographing food in a well-lit restaurant, positioning your phone so the light comes from diagonally behind your food is best. The experts call this a “semi-backlit position”, which boosts the depth and colour of your meal.

Google Pixel lets you manually adjust settings like brightness, shadows, and white balance for better pictures. Here’s how:

• Launch the Camera app.

• Tap the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to open the menu.

• Fine-tune these settings, like the brightness if you’re having a candle-lit dinner.

White balance is also important for taking great food photography, too. Food looks much better with warmer, reddish tones, as bluish tones can make your meal look cold. But in a dimly-lit cocktail bar with reddish lighting, setting the white balance to be cooler can create a moody and mysterious atmosphere.

With Google Pixel Camera, you can even adjust the brightness and white balance while checking the preview screen, so you can capture delicious food and stylish drinks in the moment without worrying about lighting.

If you want to shoot still pics of your latte art or cheese platter from perfectly above, open the Camera app and hold your Google Pixel flat over the table. Align the central crosshairs to make sure you're shooting from directly above.

If you're photographing items to sell online, or capturing your hand-made hobbies to share on socials, Google Pixel Camera features come in handy for product photography.

You'll want to think about composition when you’re photographing products, as having the subject smack-bang in the middle isn't always the best way. The composition technique called the "rule of thirds” divides the screen into a 3x3 grid. Put the subject along one of the lines or at one of the four intersection points, and you’ve now got yourself a well-balanced composition.

Try enabling the grid display when shooting for a helpful guide. Here’s how you set it up:

• Open the Camera app.

• Tap the settings icon in the bottom left.

• Tap More settings.

• Then tap Grid type to select your grid.

Google Pixel also offers features for taking straight-on photos. Besides the crosshairs useful for flatlays, you can also use a horizontal guide to help prevent tilted photos. Putting the horizontal guide at the centre of your preview screen while shooting makes for a sharp arrangement.

Google Pixel phones feature ripper AI-powered editing features that take your photos to the next level after shooting.

If you haven’t taken your brunch pic at quite the right angle, you can adjust the tilt with Google Photo’s edit and crop features. Here’s how:

• Open the photo you want to adjust in the Photos app.

• Select Edit and Crop, then tap the trapezoid icon that appears.

• Points will appear at the four corners of the photo, which you can drag around your object so it appears as if it was shot from above.

In Google Photos, you can use the Blur Fix feature to correct blurry photos, too:

• Simply select the photo you want to correct.

• Choose Edit, then Tools.

• Tap Blur Fix.

• Tap Done to save a copy.

What’s more, the Magic Eraser lets you effortlessly remove unwanted objects from your photos. Here’s how to get rid of a photobomber in your picnic pics or clear out background clutter when you’re photographing items to sell online³.

• Open Google Photos app.

• Select photo to edit.

• Tap Edit.

• Go to Tools.

• Select Magic Eraser.

• Tap suggestions or circle/brush unwanted objects.

• Tap Done then Save.

If you want to extend the photo's background, Magic Editor's Auto Frame is a handy feature. Available on Google Pixel series 8 and upwards, AI suggests new background filler by naturally generating the outside of the photo. Plus, you can choose the best photo from a few options, so it looks just right¹.

Give these tips and features a shot and capture your very own Pixel perfect photos. For more recommendations on capturing impressive photos of friends, family, and fur babies, check out this article.