Fujifilm JPEG Recipes vs Lightroom Presets
The short answer
A Fujifilm recipe is a set of in-camera JPEG settings that bake a look into the file before you press the shutter. A Lightroom preset is applied to a RAW file afterwards, on the computer. Recipes win for speed and finishing in-camera. Presets win for control. Most people who shoot both end up using both, and that is how I work.
NIGHT ECHO PRESET FROM FILM EDITION 4If you have spent any time around Fujifilm cameras, you have probably run into both of these words, and maybe you are a bit confused about why you would need either when the other exists.
It is a fair question. I make both. I have written recipe books, and I build Lightroom presets, so I have no reason to talk you into one over the other.
What I can do is tell you what each one is for and how to work out which one fits how you actually work.
What a JPEG recipe actually is
A JPEG recipe lives inside the camera. It is a combination of a film simulation and a stack of settings on top of it: white balance shift, dynamic range, highlight and shadow tone, colour chrome, grain, clarity, and so on.
You dial it in once, save it as a custom setting, and from then on the camera applies that look to every JPEG as you shoot. The picture comes out finished. No computer needed, no editing needed.
This is the thing many people fall in love with about Fujifilm cameras. You sort of get the feeling back of shooting a roll of film, where the look was a decision you made before you pressed the shutter.
When a recipe is right for the light you are in, there is almost nothing to do once you are home. That is a really lovely way to work, and for a lot of photographers it is the whole reason they switched to Fuji in the first place.
The catch is that a recipe is a committed choice. It is baked into the JPEG. If the light shifts halfway through or you get the white balance slightly wrong, you are working with a file that already has issues. You can edit a JPEG in Lightroom, but you are editing a finished thing, not reworking it from scratch.
CINEMATIC COLOUR JPEG RECIPEWhere the Fujifilm recipe came from
Recipes did not appear out of nowhere, and the history is worth knowing because it explains why this is such a Fujifilm thing and barely a thing at all on other brands.
Fujifilm made photographic film for the better part of a century before it made digital cameras. The film simulations built into every X and GFX body are not arbitrary colour presets. They draw on decades of real emulsions, which is why names like Provia, Velvia, Astia, Acros and Eterna will ring a bell to anyone who shot film.
There are around twenty of these simulations on the latest cameras now, where the earliest X bodies had only a handful. Couple that heritage with the X-Trans sensor and a JPEG engine widely regarded as the best in the business, and you have a camera that produces a finished file some people are happy to use as-is.
The word recipe, in the sense we mean it, took hold around 2017, and that’s when I first started publishing JPEG Recipes on this site. It is worth remembering how unusual that was at the time. Shooting JPEG was really looked down on by “professionals”, and the number of people who were shooting straight out of the camera was small. Sharing your settings was new. A recipe back then might be as bare as Provia with a couple of tweaks.
What changed is that people realised how much character was sitting in that JPEG engine, and a whole community grew up around getting different looks out of it. I have been part of that for years, sharing my own recipes alongside the wider community, and even Fujifilm themselves lean into it, with other camera makers now adding their own recipe-style features in response.
Try it yourself: my free Recipe Maker
If reading about recipes makes you want to go and make one, I built a free tool for exactly that. Pick your camera or sensor generation, choose a mood, and it rolls a fresh recipe for you to try, drawn from a huge range of sensible combinations rather than pure randomness. No sign-up, completely free.
What a Lightroom preset actually is
A preset works the other way. You shoot the RAW file, which holds all the original information the sensor captured, and then, in Lightroom, you apply a preset that shapes the file into a look.
Because you are starting from the full RAW, you have far more editing latitude. You can recover a blown sky, lift shadows that the JPEG would have crushed, fix a white balance that went wrong, and still get a consistent finish across a whole set.
Here is where I should be straight about what my presets are, because they are not like most preset packs.
A lot of presets on the market are just a saved stack of slider positions: a bit more contrast, a colour shift, some grain. Mine are built on custom colour profiles, the same kind of LUT-based foundation that sits under a proper film look, rather than a pile of sliders sat on top of Adobe's default processing engine. That’s important because it means the look holds up across different files and different lighting conditions instead of falling apart the moment a frame isn't perfectly exposed.
So a preset gives you control and recoverability. The price you pay is time and a computer. You are editing, even if it is one click, and you are doing it after the fact rather than at the time the photo was taken.
If recipes are your thing
My Fujifilm recipes are free to browse and use, and always will be. If you want a larger library in one place with the full settings and before-and-after for each, the camera-specific books pull fifty-plus together for you.
Where each one wins
Neither is necessarily better. They are good at different things, and the way to choose is to look at what you actually need from your photographs.
| What you want | Choose |
|---|---|
| A finished look with no editing afterwards | A recipe |
| The fastest possible turnaround | A recipe |
| To recover highlights, shadows or white balance | A preset on RAW |
| A consistent finish across a big shoot | A preset on RAW |
| Full control over the final image | A preset on RAW |
| To enjoy the camera and stay off the computer | A recipe |
A Note on X-RAW Studio
There is a third option that sits neatly between the two, and many people do not know it exists. Fujifilm makes a free piece of software called X RAW Studio. You connect the camera to your computer with a USB cable, and the software uses the camera's own processor to convert your RAW files. In other words, you get the exact in-camera rendering, the real film simulation, and all the JPEG parameters, but applied afterwards on the computer rather than committed when you press the shutter.
That makes it a really good middle ground. Like a recipe, the look comes from the camera's engine rather than from Lightroom, so it has that authentic Fujifilm character baked in. Like a preset workflow, you are working after the fact, so you can shoot RAW, get the file safely in the bag, and decide on the look later, even trying several before you settle. If you have ever wished you could change a recipe on a shot you have already taken, this is how to do it.
It is not a replacement for Lightroom. You need the physical camera tethered; it works through the camera’s processor and gives you simulations rather than the full latitude of a proper RAW editor for recovering a badly exposed file.
I have written a full step-by-step guide to it if you want to try it.
Want to try X RAW Studio? I have a full walkthrough of how to set it up and use it here: How to use Fujifilm X RAW Studio.
When one replaces the other
There are people who do not need both, and I would rather tell you that than sell you something you will not use.
If you only ever shoot JPEG, you are happy with what comes out of the camera, and you do not want to sit at a computer, you do not need presets.
A good set of recipes does the whole job for you. Get the recipes right, set up a couple of custom slots, and enjoy your photography. That is a complete and valid way to work, and plenty of photographers I know shoot this way exclusively.
Equally, if you shoot RAW for everything because you like to finish your images yourself, recipes are a nice-to-have rather than a need.
You might still set one up so the back of the camera shows you a pleasant preview, but the real look will happen in Lightroom, and that is where a Lightroom Preset comes in.
A large group of photographers, and I suspect this is most people reading, shoot a mix of both. JPEG when they want to travel light, RAW when you want to take full control of the image. If that is you, you will get real use out of both.
Be honest with yourself about how you shoot. If you genuinely never open Lightroom, do not buy presets, buy into recipes and enjoy them. If you live in Lightroom, the presets are where your money is better spent. The worst outcome is buying something that you wouldn't use.
KODAK DOUBLE-X S222 True Film PRESET FROM FILM EDITION 4Which should you buy?
If you are a JPEG shooter who loves the look straight out of the camera, start with the recipes. The books are built per camera and give you 50+ recipes with exact settings, so you skip the months of trial and error I went through and get results quickly.
If you shoot RAW, or you want the kind of control and recoverability a JPEG cannot give you, the Film Edition presets are the place to look. They are built on those custom colour profiles I mentioned, so the look holds together across a full set of images.
My offerings
Depending on how you shoot: JPEG shooter who wants the look in-camera? Start with the recipe books. Shoot RAW and want full control? The Film Edition presets are built for you.
How I use both together
For what it is worth, here is how it works for me in practice, because I do use both (like a lot of photographers).
When I am shooting for myself, on the street with the X100VI or the X70, I almost always shoot JPEG+RAW with a recipe I trust. That gives me the best of both worlds. If I want to stick with the camera-generated image, I can, but if I want to edit it later, I can do that too.
When I am working, when the lighting is difficult, or when I know I will need a consistent set, I shoot RAW exclusively and import it into Lightroom, where a preset does the work and gives me a clean, even result across the board.
If you are going all in on the editing side
If you have decided presets are for you and you would rather not buy them one at a time, the bundles gather the full range and the colour profiles behind them. It's the best value across my preset range.
You can get a 20% discount by joining my very infrequent newsletter.
FAQ
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Yes, and a lot of people do, just not on the same file at the same moment. A recipe finishes a JPEG in-camera. A preset finishes a RAW file later. Many photographers shoot JPEG with a recipe most of the time and switch to RAW with a preset when a shoot calls for it.
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They build on them. My presets are designed around the Fujifilm character rather than fighting it, so you keep the look you bought the camera for and gain control over it. They are not trying to turn your Fuji into something else.
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Not really. If you are happy finishing in-camera and you do not want to edit afterwards, a good set of recipes is the whole job. Presets come into their own once you are working with RAW files.
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The Film Edition presets are built to work broadly, while the Micro Packs are made for a specific camera and only that camera. The product pages say clearly which is which, so you can match the right pack to your body.
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Most free presets are a saved stack of slider settings. Mine are built on custom colour profiles, a LUT-based foundation, which is why the look holds together across different files and lighting instead of breaking down on anything less than a perfect exposure.
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They are designed for RAW, where you have the full file to work with. You can apply them to a JPEG, but you will have far less room to move, because the JPEG has already been finished by the camera.
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Not quite. A film simulation is the base, Fujifilm's digital take on a classic film stock. A recipe is a film simulation with a set of JPEG parameters layered on top, things like white balance shift, dynamic range, and tone curves, fine-tuned into a specific look. The simulation does a lot of the work, and the recipe shapes it into something of its own.
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Yes, if you shot RAW. Fujifilm's free X RAW Studio software reprocesses RAW files through the camera's own processor, so you can apply or adjust a recipe after the shot and still get the genuine in-camera look. It is the closest thing to changing your mind about a recipe later.
