Fujifilm film recipes, explained setting by setting

A Fujifilm film recipe is a list of in-camera JPEG settings that together produce one look. You set it once, save it to a custom slot, and the camera writes JPEGs that already have the colour and contrast you wanted, with no editing afterwards. The recipe changes nothing about exposure or the RAW data. It only tells the camera how to turn the sensor readout into a finished JPEG.

Recipes get passed around as a short block of values, and most of them look like this:

• Film simulation: Classic Chrome
• Dynamic range: DR200
• White balance: Daylight, +2 Red and -3 Blue
• Highlight: -1, Shadow: +1
• Color: +2
• Sharpness: -1
• High ISO NR: -4
• Grain effect: Weak, Small
• Color Chrome Effect: Strong
• Color Chrome FX Blue: Weak
• Clarity: 0
• ISO: Auto, up to 6400
• Exposure compensation: +1/3 to +2/3

That one is an illustration, written to show the format. This post walks through each line in the order recipes are usually written, says what it does to the file, and notes which bodies have it. Every setting here has more to it than one section can hold, and I'll be covering the biggest ones in their own posts over the next week.

Film simulation

The film simulation is the base the rest of the recipe is built on. It sets the colour response and the default tone curve, and every other setting nudges the result away from it. Classic Chrome gives muted colour with firm shadows, Classic Negative gives hard contrast with cyan-leaning shadows and warm highlights, Eterna is flat and low in saturation for a cinematic grade, and Acros is Fujifilm's monochrome with its own grain structure. Each one is compared in Fujifilm film simulations compared.

Which simulations you have depends on the camera's processor generation. Classic Negative arrived with the X-Pro3 in 2019, Eterna Bleach Bypass with the X-T4 in 2020, Nostalgic Neg with the GFX100S in 2021 and the X-H2S in 2022, and Reala Ace with the GFX100 II in 2023. A recipe built on a simulation your body lacks can't be dialled in, so check that line first.

Dynamic range

DR100, DR200 and DR400 protect highlights by underexposing the sensor by one or two stops and then lifting the midtones back when the JPEG is made. The cost is a higher minimum ISO. On bodies with a base ISO of 160, which covers most of X-Trans IV, DR200 needs at least ISO 320 and DR400 at least ISO 640. On the X-T5, X-H2, X100VI and other bodies with a base of 125, the floors are 250 and 500.

This matters when you read a recipe that pairs DR200 with ISO 160. The camera won't take ISO 160 at DR200, so on those bodies the bottom of the range is really 320.

White balance and white balance shift

White balance can be a preset (Daylight, Shade, Fluorescent and so on), Auto, or a Kelvin value between 2500K and 10000K. The shift moves the result on a grid of -9 to +9 on the red axis and -9 to +9 on the blue axis, and for a lot of recipes the shift is the setting that makes the look. Classic Chrome with +3 Red and -5 Blue looks like a different film from Classic Chrome with no shift at all. More on how the grid works in Fujifilm white balance shift.

One thing catches people out. The camera stores a separate shift for each white balance mode, so a shift you set on Daylight doesn't follow you when you switch to Auto. When a recipe gives a mode and a shift, set the mode first and then the shift.

Highlight and shadow tone

These two adjust the tone curve. Positive values add contrast at that end of the curve and negative values soften it, from -2 to +4 in half steps on X-Trans IV and later bodies. A highlight of -1 rolls the brightest tones off more gently, which suits bright daylight. A shadow of +1 or +2 deepens the blacks. They interact with DR, because DR has already compressed the highlights before the curve is applied, and a recipe that uses DR400 with Highlight -2 can look very flat.

Color

Color is saturation, from -4 to +4. It stacks on top of the simulation, so +2 on Classic Chrome is still quieter than 0 on Velvia. On monochrome simulations such as Acros the setting does nothing and the camera greys it out.

Sharpness, noise reduction and clarity

Sharpness runs from -4 to +4, and a lot of recipes pull it down a step or two to soften the digital edge. High ISO NR also runs from -4 to +4. Recipes for X-Trans IV and later often set it to -4, because the default smears fine texture at higher ISOs and the grain setting is doing a better job of hiding noise anyway.

Clarity, from -5 to +5, adds or removes local midtone contrast. It arrived with the X-Pro3 generation, and anything other than 0 makes the camera spend a moment processing each frame before you can shoot the next one, so most recipes leave it at 0 or use -1 or -2 for a softer look.

Grain effect

Grain is set as a strength (Off, Weak or Strong) and, from the X-Pro3 on, a size (Small or Large). Weak and Small is the most common choice because it survives downsizing for the web. Large grain reads well on a print and turns into mush on a phone screen.

Color Chrome Effect and Color Chrome FX Blue

Color Chrome Effect deepens the tones of highly saturated colours so that a red jacket or a yellow sign keeps its gradation instead of clipping into a flat patch. FX Blue does the same for blues, mainly skies and water. Both are Off, Weak or Strong. The X-T3 and X-T30 have Color Chrome Effect but no FX Blue. Both appear from the X-Pro3 generation onward.

ISO and exposure compensation

Recipes usually give an ISO range for Auto ISO rather than a fixed value, and an exposure compensation that the look was built around. Classic Chrome and Classic Negative recipes often ask for +1/3 to +2/3, because those simulations push shadows dark and a slightly brighter exposure keeps faces out of them. Treat exposure compensation as a starting point, since it depends on the scene more than anything else in the list.

Saving a recipe to a custom slot

X-Trans IV and V bodies have seven custom slots, C1 to C7, under Edit/Save Custom Setting in the image quality menu. Each slot stores the whole list above, including the white balance shift. Once a recipe is saved, you switch looks from the Q menu without touching any individual setting.

Check the Auto Update Custom Setting option in the same menu. When it's on, any change you make while shooting in a slot is written back into that slot, and a quick exposure tweak silently becomes part of the recipe.

Older bodies

X-Trans III cameras such as the X-T2, X-Pro2 and X100F have Acros and Classic Chrome but no Classic Negative, no Color Chrome Effect, no grain size and only whole-step tone adjustments. The X-H1 was the one X-Trans III body to get Eterna, and the X-T3 and X-T30 have Eterna plus Color Chrome Effect. A recipe written for X-Trans V needs adapting on those bodies, and the result will be an approximation of the original. X-Trans V recipes also run on most X-Trans IV bodies, though blues come out a little less deep on Classic Chrome, Classic Negative and the two Eterna simulations.

Where Luma fits

I built Luma around this format. It writes a new Fujifilm recipe every morning with every field above filled in, keeps the ones you save in a recipe library, and hands a recipe to someone else as a QR code. Its Advanced Preview applies a recipe to one of your own photos on your machine, so you can see roughly what it does before you dial it in. The preview is an approximation built on per-channel colour shifts. It hasn't been profiled against real camera JPEGs, and the camera is the final word.

Luma is a CraftedPxl project. It's in open beta at lumaphoto.app, with more on the Luma project page and in the post that introduced it.