Floating fruit, creating images with fruit that floats or levitates isn’t hard, but loads of fun.  You do need Photoshop (or similar software that removes elements from photos) – but don’t need to be an expert.  The first time I ever tried it, I used a carrot. I had fallen in love with images I had seen of the bananas but had none in the house. So a carrot pressed into service. 

Harder fruits or vegetables are much more manageable than soft ones. When I did get around to the banana, it was a lot more temperamental than the carrot.  Being softer, the toothpicks slid and moved quite easily. So, where to start.

Lighting

All of mine have been taken inside, with good filtered window light. If you have lights or a flash, that may work for you. I prefer natural lighting or continuous lights over flash, but that’s just me.  Setup your ‘scene’ with a nice background and base… something non-intrusive as the fruit is the star of the shot.  All shots below were taken against a white melamine board background and on a wood panel look wallpaper.

I used a standard 24-105 lens, F5.6, ISO, and Shutter speed to suit my light.  Choose good quality, firm fruit without blemishes and slice it to your preferred shape. Then ‘construct’ it back together with toothpicks.

Fire up Photoshop

The toothpicks hold the fruit into the shape you want, plus support it to stand upright by itself.  Once you are happy with the arrangements, fire off your shots and then import them into Photoshop.  Make sure you are working on the flattened image, and from here, the magic starts. On the left side, toolbar choose the polygon tool. It’s the third one from the top.  The polygon tool is like a piece of elastic. Choose your start point and click, go to the next point and click, next and click, etc., finishing back at the start point.  Once you join the two together, you’ll get the marching ants.

Once you have the marching ants, you hit delete on your keyboard, and the content-aware menu will pop up. N now click enter, and the toothpick (should) disappear like magic.  If it doesn’t work, try doing it in smaller sections. The ‘maths’ behind it is replacing what you have chosen with the tool with what is nearby. So you need to let it know exactly what you want gone and have some space for it to pick to replace it with.  In some instances, I had to remove the toothpicks one at a time even though the two were close side by side.

Keep going until you have removed all the toothpicks, then edit your image as your normally would. Try Apples, Pears, Banana’s, Tomatoes, Carrots, Kiwi Fruit, any Citrus works well. Have fun!