Cooking great tasting food is an art of it's own, but to create a restaurant quality dish requires the food to be professionally presented.  I have no formal training in cooking and really struggle trying to make my dishes look as stunning as you would see on the food channels or gourmet magazines, so I ask:  What simple techniques or tips exist that a novice chef could use to enhance the presentation of a dish (i.e. make it more visually appealing?)  For example: balancing colours of food, drizzling this or that, stacking items vertically. 
I usually don't add anything to the plate that doesn't flow with the food. i.e. i hate it when  cooks add one piece of parsley on top of a meal. I love parsley, either give me a plate of it, or don't put it at all. I digress, but here are some of the things I live by:   You need to present your plate in the matter, it should be eaten:  Appetizers, let's say you're serving a shrimp, dip and greens, you'll serve the shrimp on one end of your plate, the associated veggie / food item in the middle, and the sauce at the other end. in desserts, don't squeeze the hell out of a choco sauce bottle all over the plate, rather put the chocolate sauce in the center of the plate and place the dessert over it  Plate should not make it look that you either have too much or too little food  This is important with salads and pastas, as you can make the same amount of food look to little or too much plate temperatures, hot food goes on hot plates and cold foods goes on cold plates  Veggies, you need to know which ones could be grated, slivered, julienned, and chopped or on the other hand, you can get a radish or tomato peal and make a tulip out of the whole god-darn thing. you should make the food look edible, regardless of how good/ bad it tastes. Take sushi for example, whether you like it or not, a nice boat of sushi, is usually something very sexy to look at. On the other hand consider creole, a mishmash of brown stuff on top of rice, so you need to a bit of color, hide the rice under the food, put it in a deep bowl, even in a bread made bowl.  if something is layered, show it (Especially for desserts) If you're gonna paint brush let's say a brown jus with a steak or a piece of lamb, then do it in a fashion where the eater understands that he or she needs to dip the piece of meet into the sauce. Don't put stuff on there that doesn't belong, but only makes the dish look pretty let the main player stand out. let's say you're serving a shrimp pasta, you could always have the shrimp buried in the dish with the tails standing out.   anyways i digress, I'm sorry 