I was wondering if anyone can shed some light on something that has been puzzling me. Im sure that anytime, many of us who see advertisements, commercials or even if someone Googles pizza, the things we see the most are pizzas from the top chains(Top 5). Now, the thing that has me perplexed is,how do these guys make their pizzas look so perfect? Like,is someone cutting out the dough with a beam compass? Do they use a level to make them so straight and even? How do they do that? What do they use to make? Dough presses? Sheeting machines? Do they airbrush them to give them that perfect colour(I have heard that some restaurants when taking pictures of their products, they freeze the item so that it can be airbrushed)? Or,dare I say it,? Have they been photoshopped? Lol.
Im not naive enough to believe that everytime someone orders a pizza from them it looks like their adds, but Im sure they must have some methods that would make them consistent.
We used to do a lot of “photo shoots” and the procedure was to either hand make a number of products so we could select the very best one for the photo session, or in the case of a mass-produced product, we would select as many as 50, and some times more, products from the processing line, then a group of us would select the 10 best from that group, and corporate would then select the candidate(s) for the photo-shoot from that group. Life ain’t perfect, but there is no reason why photographs can’t be. We also used little tricks such as spraying the product with water, shooting it from specific angles, resetting the lights to hide flaws, and a whole host of other little tricks of the trade to make the models look even better.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
I know someone who has previously ‘made’ pizza’s for photo shoots for one of the top five. The pizza is slapped, sauced and topped as normal except a little more time is taken with the toppings . I understand that most are a little undercooked and then its up to the photo team to work their magic with lighting etc. I believe most phot’s use oils to make meat etc shine more for the photo’s. Notice also that most pizzas are not cut as they look better.
Sure he may produce a number of pizza’s to get the best but there are plenty of guys out their who can produce picture perfect pizza’s every time. I’ve one guy in one of my two shops who can produce absolutly stunning pizza’s when he puts his mind to it. Anyone who’s been slapping for a couple of years and had been trained well can produce top quality, perfectly round, pizza’s. Note - I can’t! 
Thank you for the interesting info and insight guys. But like i mentioned, its not only presentation, I’m sure if enough time is taking and every ingredient surgically place it would make for a very appelaing look. But the shape, texture(they are perfectly smooth around the edges) colour, everything is perfect about them. Can a pizzeria really pump out picture perfect carbon copy pizzas all the time? Are the ovens used to make these impingement, rotary, deck? I have read that the most consistent ovens are impingement conveyor ovens but the dough does have to be tweaked to achieve the desired finished product.
For the pictures that we took, you only needed one perfect, or nearly perfect pizza. A little TLC would take care of any blemishes, and lighting and photo angles would take care of the rest. In many cases, the pizzas aren’t even baked in a pizza oven. No need to make hundreds, just one, or two.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
There are actually people who live a career of “food stylists” that create the food that you see in print, be it magazine covers, television, etc.
They had a food stylist competition on Food Network a few months ago is how I found that out. Talk about a cushy job. 
yes having experience working with an ad agency and a franchise. It really requires many takes and painstaking detailed layouts to get that perfect photo!!
You can guarantee that no prep rations etc… are used here. Each pepperoni is laidout carefully as well as selected carefully…
And sometimes it is not cooked but a butane torched is used to get the correct color on crust or meats and to melt the cheese exactly how they want it.
Here is some interesting reading on photographing food. http://photocritic.org/food-photo-tricks/[/url] and here is an eye opener for those who want to take there own photos [url=http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm]http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm
Damnnnn,Daddio,that was an eye opening link you sent,thanks for the 411. 
Yikes that was bad.
BTW I did NOT authorize that website to use the picture of my abs in the diet ad at the bottom. I feel violated.