I don’t know if there’s any photography trend that’s hotter right now than Fujifilm Recipes. To say that they’re popular is an understatement. It’s a significant reason why Fujifilm cameras are doing so well right now, selling nearly three times as many units in 2025 as they did in 2023. Even Fujifilm has started to design their cameras around it, such as the ability to store Recipes into FS1-FS3 on the X-E5, and including the FRGMT B&W Recipe in a limited-edition GFX100RF. It’s revolutionizing photography. This trend doesn’t show signs of stopping, and I suspect Recipes will remain a popular part of the Fujifilm experience for years to come.

As one of the very first to create and publish Fujifilm Recipes, and one of the original resources for Recipes (basically, I was creating and shooting Recipes long before they were cool), I have had a front row seat to all of this. It’s amazing to me to see just how far it’s all come! I never imagined how much this would grow and grow. But not everyone appreciates this trend, or understands what this whole Recipe thing is even about, which has caused some myths to appear, many you’ve likely heard many times yourself. Let’s look at five of these myths, and quickly debunk them.

Recipes are for Amateurs

This has been discussed at length many times, so I don’t want to spend very much time on it, but—yes—Fujifilm Recipes are for amateur photographers, and they are also for professional photographers, and everyone in-between. There are many people of all skill levels that use Recipes on their Fujifilm cameras, including some names that you’re probably familiar with (but maybe you have no idea they use Recipes). There are some photographers who I would have never guessed use Recipes, but it turns out they do (at least sometimes). Those who claim that Fujifilm Recipes are only for amateurs would likely be shocked if they knew of all the people who are not amateurs that use them.

Recipes are JPEG-only

A couple of years ago when I started traveling around and meeting many of you in-person at various photography events and photowalks, I learned something that greatly surprised me: people use Recipes in all sorts of different ways. For example, I met several photographers who are strict RAW-only shooters; however, they’ve found a Recipe that is similar to their personal style, which helps them to better pre-visualize the final image while in the field, and it also gives them a shortcut to the finished photograph. Another shoots RAW+JPEG, and overlays and blends the JPEG into the edited RAW image. The developers of a large RAW software company largely use Recipes for their own photography, and even developed a tool to help them better match the RAW to their JPEGs whenever they need to edit the RAWs. Some people edit the out-of-camera JPEGs, finding it flexible enough to handle mild manipulations, while others (like me) are a lot more strictly straight-out-of-camera. There’s no single method, nor any one that’s better than another; instead, it’s whatever works best for you personally.

Recipes are Too Warm/Yellow

Many Fujifilm Recipes are warm with a yellow-ish cast, but so are a lot of films, especially many Kodak emulsions. Warming filters were once common in film photography, and some vintage lenses have a warm cast from their radioactive lens coating. Like film, many Recipes are daylight-balanced, and can produce an overly warm cast when used in artificial light scenarios. But, there are also lots of Recipes that aren’t warm, and don’t produce a yellow-ish cast. If you don’t like a warm-tinted image, find one of the many Recipes that are neutral or have a cool cast.

Recipes are just Instagram Filters

Recipes are not filters, per se. For example, how the various film simulations render—especially Classic Negative and Acros—depend on how you expose the image. It’s integrated into the image processing pipeline, and is not an overlay. But on a more practical level, when you shoot with Recipes, you see the finished image in the viewfinder, which is a much different process and experience (with significantly divergent results) than adding a filter to an image after-the-fact. Aside from that, Fujifilm’s colors, which were developed using their long history of analog film, are second-to-none.

Recipes aren’t any Quicker than RAW Editing with Presets

Of coarse Fujifilm Recipes are much quicker than the fastest RAW workflow. Why? Because the straight-out-of-camera JPEG is finished instantly, the moment that it’s captured. As I’ve said before: shoot more, edit less, and let your camera be your darkroom. But this only matters if that time savings is important to you personally—for me, it literally changed my life (no hyperbole), and is especially critical for my travel photography. For someone else, it may not be about the time savings, but more about the aesthetic the Recipe produces, or the ability to pre-visualize the finished RAW image in the field.

There’s no right or wrong way to do photography, only whatever works best for you personally. That might be RAW, that might be straight-out-of-camera JPEGs using Recipes, it might be a mix of both, or something else entirely. The pathway to your finished photograph matters much less than the picture itself. Do what works best for you, whatever that is. As long as you are happy with your process and pictures, that’s all that really matters.