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Photo Studio — turning phone shots into menu photos

You took a quick photo of the carbonara at the pass with your phone. The plate looks great but the kitchen lights are yellow, the napkin is wrinkled, and the angle is wrong. Photo Studio is the in-app tool that takes that exact phone shot and gives you back a polished version you can drop straight onto your menu — warm trattoria lighting, clean linen, sharp focus on the dish, the same carbonara.

This page is for owners, chefs, and floor managers who want to use the studio for the first time, or who want to know whether it’s worth turning on for their venue. You don’t have to be an owner or a manager to use it — anyone whose role includes the Generate AI photos permission can, and your owner decides which roles get it.

What it does

The studio takes one photo at a time. You upload a finished plate or finished cocktail, pick a style (a saved look — “Warm Trattoria”, “Studio Plate”, “Cocktail Bar Mood”), choose a size, and the AI re-renders the photo in that style. The dish stays the same — the bowl, the garnish, the colour of the wine. What changes is the lighting, the surface, the background, the depth of field. It’s the difference between “I took this with my phone in the kitchen” and “this came back from a photographer’s studio.”

It is not an image generator. It will not invent a dish you don’t have, and it will not turn a salad into a steak. It restyles. If the carbonara in your phone shot has no parsley, the output won’t have parsley. If the cocktail in your phone shot is in a coupe, the output is in a coupe. This is deliberate — the photo on your menu has to match what the customer actually receives.

Every photo costs credits out of your venue’s monthly AI budget. The bigger the output (1K, 2K, or 4K), the more credits it costs. You’ll see the cost in the bottom bar before you press Generate.

The rule

The studio restyles, never invents. What’s in the original photo is what’s in the final photo — only the lighting, surface, and atmosphere change.

How to use it

Open the studio one of two ways. From the admin sidebar, Growth → Photo Studio drops you into the page with the full admin shell. Or, on a phone, go straight to /photo-studio — same tool, no sidebar, designed for a thumb. Either way the workflow is the same.

Step 1 — your photo

In the Your photo panel on the left, tap the dashed box (or drag a file in from your desktop). It accepts JPG, PNG, and HEIC (the iPhone format) and downscales anything bigger than 4000px before uploading so your data connection isn’t burned. Once it’s loaded, you’ll see a preview with Change photo and Remove controls in the corner.

Take the photo well-lit if you can. The AI will fix yellow kitchen light and harsh shadows, but if the dish is out of focus or someone’s thumb is in the frame, the output will inherit those problems. Phone defaults are fine; ring lights are overkill.

Step 2 — pick a style

On the right, choose Food, Drinks, or General. Each category shows the curated styles available to your venue — every venue starts with the same platform library, and your owner can add custom styles on top if you have the manage permission. Tap a style card to select it (you’ll see a green border). Tap the heart in the corner to save a style to Favorites so it surfaces at the top next time.

A few starting points:

  • Studio Plate — bright top-down studio light, neutral plate. The safe default for a busy menu.
  • Warm Trattoria — candlelight, wood, amber tones. Good for hearty Italian dishes.
  • Overhead Flatlay — bird’s-eye view on white marble. Good for shareable plates and breads.
  • Cocktail Bar Mood — low light, condensation on the glass, soft back-rim light.
  • Wine on Linen — soft daylight, white tablecloth, clean for bottle and glass shots.

Step 3 — output size

Three sizes: 1K, 2K, 4K. The cost is shown next to each. 1K is fine for the smart menu and social media — it’s the cheapest and the difference is invisible on a phone. 2K is the sensible default for the website. 4K is for print materials and very large screens; it costs the most.

When you’re happy, the bottom bar shows the credit cost and the ✨ Generate AI Photo button. Tap it. The button shows Uploading… while your photo moves to storage, then Generating… while the AI works (usually 10–30 seconds for 1K, longer for 4K). When it’s done a result window opens with a Show original / Show enhanced toggle so you can compare, and a ⬇ Download full size button to save the file.

The result is automatically saved to your Gallery tab — every photo you’ve ever generated, newest first, with one-tap download or delete.

Worked example

Marco runs lunch at iO Osteria and the menu has carbonara, but the old photo is from a phone snap two years ago that looks washed out. Service is quiet, the pass plates one for him, and he pulls out his phone.

He shoots three angles of the plate, picks the best one — top-down, the egg yolk visible, guanciale crisp on top, the pasta still steaming. He opens /photo-studio on his phone, taps the dashed box, picks the photo from his camera roll. The preview comes up.

He stays on Food, taps Warm Trattoria (his venue is a trattoria, the warmth fits the room), leaves the aspect ratio at 1:1 (the smart menu is square), and selects 2K — the cost reads 12 credits. The bar shows Cost: 12 credits.

He taps Generate. About twenty seconds later the result window opens: the same carbonara, the same yolk, the same guanciale on top — now sitting on a warm-grained wooden table, candlelight wash from the upper left, the bowl rim catching a soft highlight, the steam visible against the slightly-blurred dark background. He toggles to Show original to confirm it’s the same plate. It is. He downloads it.

He opens the menu editor, finds the carbonara, replaces the old photo, and saves. Total time: under three minutes. Total cost: 12 credits — roughly $0.012 of AI spend out of his venue’s monthly budget.

The next day he does the same for the cacio e pepe, the bistecca, and the tiramisù. Twelve photos, 144 credits, under an hour of total work. The menu’s photography is consistent for the first time in a year.

When NOT to use it

  • You don’t have the dish in front of you. The studio restyles what you upload — it won’t generate a dish from thin air.
  • The original is genuinely unusable. Out of focus, hand in the frame, half-eaten — fix the source first.
  • You need a hero campaign image. For paid print or out-of-home advertising, book a real food photographer. The studio is for menu refresh and social media, not billboards.
  • Custom styles — when the platform library doesn’t match your room, owners with the manage permission can author their own styles. (coming soon — see backlog)
  • Your AI budget — Photo Studio costs come out of the same monthly AI credit pool that powers menu descriptions, the cashier assistant, and the AI menu builder. The Settings → AI page shows you a per-feature breakdown.