A Look At Fujifilm’s New JPG Effects | Clarity, Color Chrome & Grain

Fujifilm has been rolling out a ton of new effects lately. If you’re thinking of jumping up to an X-Pro 3, X-T4 or and X100V from one of the older models, there is a lot of new cool stuff that might really benefit you, or maybe not. That’s what we’re going to look at.

I’ve run a few images through all the different effects to see how they look and how they affect things.

The New Fujifilm JPG Effects

Aside from the new color simulators, Eterna and Pro Neg there are a few new color effects that were brought over from the X-Pro 3 or X-T3. The effects can be mild, but add them all together and they can have a big impact on the overall look.

All samples are shot with the Fujifilm X100V and processed with  X Raw Studio.

Clarity

Clarity is a new tool and it can have a nice effect for adding punch to images giving a deeper contrast or adding an almost soft glow effect by going the other way.

The Clarity here looks totally different than the Clarity you’re probably used to in Adobe Lightroom. 

Also, the different looks of clarity will have different effects when applying to a whole batch of images. Sometimes -1 Clarity has a big effect depending on the lighting or background. This image I’m using should give you a good idea of how it affects the contrast and what it will do to the overall look.

I’ve been shooting with +2 Clarity for my day to day stuff, and -1 Clarity for my portraits and the results have been cool and totally unique to these new Fujifilm cameras.

The clarity gives you values from 0 to +5 or -5. I took samples at +- 2 and +-5. Here is what it looks like.

Clarity +2

Clarity +5

Clarity -2

Clarity -5

Color Chrome

We initially saw Color Chrome with the X-T3 and it’s made its way into all the new cameras. Now they’ve added a new Color Chrome Blue.

The Color Chrome looks have two settings, Strong and Weak. I’ll show you Strong so you can see the full effect.

These are screenshots taken from X RAW Studio so my alignment isn’t perfect.

Color Chrome – Strong

It’s a subtle effect but you will notice it when applying it to a broad range of images. It brings out a little color depth.

Color Chrome Blue – Strong

The Color Chrome Blue effect only really effects blue. I shot a bunch of shots that had no blue in them and it made no difference. But when there is blue, like with this sample, it really punches up the contrast of the blue.

Color Chrome + Color Chrome Blue

When you combine both Color Chrome effects it can have a very punchy look. These samples also have a +2 Clarity applied.

For me, these effects have really brought to life some of the older film simulations. I absolutely love Astia now. Actually all the samples on this page are shot Astia.

I also haven’t seen Fujifilm mention this in any of their documents, but sometimes they do update the film simulators as the processors improve in power. They improve Veliva a few years ago with the X-T2.

Grain

Fujifilm has built a really nice looking natural grain pattern with different settings.

Weak or Strong with a Small or Large pattern.

I found Fujifilm JPGs have a tendency to eat fine details as part of the in-camera noise reduction process. Adding a Weak – Small grain to the images really helps masks this while giving the images a nice organic touch.

Here are some samples of what the different Fujifilm grain patterns look like. Click to see the full size 100% crop.

No Grain

Grain Weak – Small

Grain Weak – Large

Grain Strong – Small

Grain Strong – Large

New Color Effects Conclusions

There are a few other tricks the cameras offer like the multi-exposure settings and Dynamic Range Priority, but none of them will affect your images the same way as these three new effects above. 

If you’re a Fujifilm JPG shooter and were on the fence about upgrading or a RAW shooter on the fence about shooting JPG these new tools could make it totally worth it. The only thing that’s missing is the ability to add a fade.

How I’ve Been Shooting

Lately, I’ve been shooting with Color Chrome and Color Chrome Blue on Strong with a +2 Clarity. If I shoot portraits I’ll sometimes go -1 on Clarity. I’ve been finding in many situations more than -1 is too much. It starts to look too much like a haze effect.

+1 Color has also been great with Classic Chrome and Classic Neg. 

Classic Neg has a really unique tonal curve but it’s a little too dark sometimes in the shadows so I’ll lift the shadows usually -2 and bring down the highlights -1.

I’m almost always using a weak and small grain setting.

I’ve been pretty happy with these results. Also, don’t forget to revisit Astia with the new Color Chrome Effects. I think you’ll be surprised by the results.