The Fuji X Weekly App is a free mobile film simulation recipe library containing over 175 recipes for Fujifilm cameras! It’s available on both Apple and Android. This is an essential tool to accompany Fujifilm X cameras, so if you don’t have the App, you should go download it now.

Coming very soon is a large update to the Fuji X Weekly App, and I want to give you a sneak peek of what’s in store for you!

Before I begin, however, I want to talk briefly about the benefits of a becoming an App Patron. The Fuji X Weekly App is free, but advanced features are unlocked for Patrons, including Filtering, Favoriting, and early-access to some new recipes. The best App experience is reserved for Patrons.

There are two reasons why I bring this up. First, many of the App update improvements apply to Patron features, and those using the App for free won’t have access to these. The update is big for Patrons, and small for those who are not. Second, I’ve had several people tell me that I need to do a better job selling the Patron subscription because they were unaware of how much better the App is when you become a Patron. “I didn’t know what I was missing,” a couple people recently told me. If you want to get the most out of the Fuji X Weekly App, including the things we’re going to talk about below, you should become a Patron today!

That’s the entirety of my sales pitch (I’m a terrible salesman). Now to the App update sneak peek!

Favoriting & Filtering

One really great upgrade that’s coming is Favoriting on steroids. Before, when you tapped the Star to Favorite a recipe, it came in one color (yellow). But very soon you will be able to choose between five different colors: yellow, red, green, blue, and purple.

The benefit of this is that you can use colored Stars to organize recipes. Maybe yellow represents the recipes currently loaded into your camera, red represents the recipes you want to try next, and green represents the ones you tried in the past and really liked. Or maybe yellow is your favorite portrait recipes, green your favorite landscape recipes, and blue your favorite street recipes. Use the colored Stars to categorize the recipes however is meaningful to you. This will be a great organizational tool, and, for some, this is going to make the App a significantly better experience.

Another awesome App improvement that’s coming is Filter by White Balance. For many, this will be a game-changer. This is going to be the feature for some that makes the Patron subscription worthwhile! Why? Because if your Fujifilm camera is older than the X-Pro3, you cannot save White Balance Shift within C1-C7 Custom Presets, and each time you change Presets, you have to remember to adjust the WB Shift. It can be a little annoying. However, for each White Balance type, the camera will remember one WB Shift, so if each of your C1-C7 presets uses a different White Balance type, when you switch Presets, you won’t have to adjust the WB Shift.

In the App, select Filter by Camera and choose your model—let’s say you have an X-H1. Then Filter by White Balance. Start with Auto, and choose one of those recipes to be your C1 Custom Preset. There are a couple of these recipes that share the same WB Shift, so you could, if you wanted, use more than one, just as long as the WB Shift is the same. Then choose Daylight, and pick one of those recipes to be C2. Again, there are a couple that share the same WB Shift, so you could pick more than one, just as long as the WB Shift is the same. Next is Shade, and there’s just one recipe (right now, anyway) to choose from, so that could be C3. Then select Kelvin, and pick one of those recipes to be C4. Fluorescent 1 is next, and there’s only one recipe to choose from, so that could be C5. Same for Fluorescent 2, and that could be C6. Ditto for Incandescent, and that could be C7. If you picked two Auto and two Daylight recipes (that shared the same WB Shift), then you could skip two of the White Balance options that only have one recipe.

Using Filter by White Balance to help you select recipes for your C1-C7 Custom Presets will make your shooting experience more enjoyable because you won’t have to remember to adjust the WB Shift each time you change to a different Custom Preset.

Custom Recipe (Blank Recipe Cards)

If you’ve ever created your own film simulation recipe, or if you’ve found some elsewhere that you like (perhaps on the Fuji X Weekly Community Recipes page), you will soon be able to add them to your App! A new feature will be blank recipe cards that you fill out. You will even be able to add your own pictures from your camera roll! At some point down the road the idea is that you’ll be able to export, import, and share these custom recipes (that ability won’t be in this update). Several of you have asked for blank recipe cards, and soon you’ll have them! This will be a fun new feature that some of you will really appreciate.

There are, of course, a number of other smaller improvements that are coming with the App update—this is just a sneak peek at three of the bigger ones. With any luck, the update should be out before the end of the month. Oh, and we’ve already begun working on the following update (for sometime next year) that will include a number of other great new features and improvements.