Ember & Silk Glow: a Fujifilm recipe for portrait

Today's Luma recipe is a portrait look, and it starts from Astia again, the simulation Fujifilm built for skin. Where yesterday's recipe flattened everything out, this one goes the other way on texture. Clarity sits at +2 and sharpness at 0, so hair and fabric keep their edges while Astia still keeps contrast gentle across a face. Colour is at +2 and Color Chrome Effect is on Weak, which gives reds and oranges in clothing a little more depth before they start to block up.

The warmth comes from a fixed 5900K white balance with a +4 red and -2 blue shift. That's a lot of red, and it's meant for daylight. Under tungsten bulbs or warm LEDs indoors the same numbers will push skin towards orange, so if you move inside, a window is a better light source than the room lamps. Exposure compensation is +0.7 with DR200 holding the highlights, which works on a face in open shade but can clip a bright sky behind your subject, so check the histogram on the first frame.

Two practical notes. Clarity at anything other than 0 adds a short processing pause after each shot on most X-Trans bodies, so this suits a sitting with someone more than candid street work. Noise reduction is at -3, which keeps skin texture natural at ISO 320 but shows grain by ISO 1600, and the Weak, Small grain setting adds a little more on top of that.

Settings

• Film simulation: Astia
• Dynamic range: DR200
• D-range priority: Off
• Grain effect: Weak, Small
• Color chrome effect: Weak
• Color chrome FX blue: Off
• White balance: 5900K
• White balance shift: +4 Red, -2 Blue
• Highlights: -1
• Shadows: -1
• Color: +2
• Sharpness: 0
• Noise reduction: -3
• Clarity: +2
• ISO: 320 to 1600
• Exposure compensation: +0.7

It works on the X-T5, X-T50, X-T4, X-T3, X-T30 II, X-H2, X-H2S, X-S20, X-S10, X-Pro3, X-E4, X-E5, X-M5, X100VI, X100V, GFX100 II, GFX100S II, GFX100S, GFX100RF and GFX50S II.

The full recipe is on Luma's daily page, with a new one every day.