Recipe Creation Tips

The most common way people start with recipes is by copying someone else's settings. That works for getting a feel for what is possible, but it is a poor way to build a recipe you will actually use long-term. Someone else's recipe was tuned for their subjects, their light, and their taste. It may look brilliant on their sample images and disappointing on yours, and you will not know which setting to change because you do not understand why each value was chosen.

A better approach is to start from scratch, which is less intimidating than it sounds. Pick a film simulation and set everything else to zero or off. Shoot a dozen images in the kind of light and with the kind of subjects you actually photograph. Look at the results and ask yourself one question: what do I want to change? Maybe the image is too cool. Maybe the shadows are too deep. Maybe it needs more texture. Each answer points you at a specific setting, and you make that one adjustment, then shoot again.

This process is slower than copying a recipe, but the result is a set of settings you understand from the ground up. When something looks wrong in the field, you will know which dial to reach for because you put each value there for a reason. You will also end up with a look that is genuinely yours rather than a copy of someone else's taste.

Start with a simulation whose character matches the general direction you want. If you want warm and nostalgic, start with Classic Neg. and see how far it gets you before adding adjustments. If you want clean and neutral, start with Provia or REALA ACE. If you want muted and atmospheric, start with Classic Chrome. The film simulation comparison will help you choose the right foundation.

Not all settings carry the same weight. Some produce dramatic, visible changes; others are fine-tuning that you might not notice unless you compare images side by side. When building a recipe, start with the settings that have the biggest impact and work your way down to the subtler ones.

White Balance and WB Shift: The Biggest Lever

White balance has more influence on the mood of your image than any other single setting. The difference between Daylight and Shade white balance is a massive shift in colour temperature that changes the entire feeling of the photograph. And the WB shift controls let you push that further in any direction: two axes labelled R and B, with R running red to cyan and B running blue to yellow. A recipe set to Daylight WB with R +3 will produce a completely different mood from the same simulation at Auto WB with no shift.

Most recipes that have a strong, recognisable character rely heavily on white balance choices. A warm street recipe might use Daylight WB (to prevent the camera from neutralising warm afternoon light) with a slight red shift. A cool, moody recipe might use Auto WB with a blue shift. If your recipe feels flat or characterless, the first place to look is white balance.

Tone Curve and Highlight/Shadow: Shaping Contrast

The tone curve highlights and shadows controls determine the contrast character of your image. Both work the same way: higher values make that end of the range harsher, lower values make it softer. So pushing shadow tone positive gives you deeper, moodier blacks, while pulling highlight tone negative preserves detail in bright areas and gives the image a softer, more film-like roll-off. If you have come from Lightroom this will feel inverted, and it is worth fixing the direction in your head early: it is the single most common mistake when entering someone else's recipe.

A common starting point is to drop highlights by one or two steps and leave shadows at zero, which produces a more controlled, less digital-looking contrast curve. From there, adjust based on the simulation: Classic Chrome already has deep shadows, so you might not need to push them further, while Provia's more neutral contrast might benefit from deeper shadows.

Color Chrome Effect: Subtle but Significant

Color Chrome Effect does something that is hard to achieve with other settings: it improves the gradation within saturated colour areas. Without it, a bright red flower or an orange sunset can block up into a flat patch of colour with no detail. With it set to Weak, you get smoother transitions and more nuance in those saturated areas. It is one of those settings that you do not notice until you turn it off, at which point you realise how much it was doing.

Color Chrome FX Blue does the same specifically for blue tones. If your recipe involves skies, water, or blue-hour scenes, setting this to Weak adds depth without oversaturation.

The Fine-Tuning Layer

Colour/saturation, sharpness, noise reduction, clarity, and grain are all secondary adjustments. They matter, but they refine a look rather than defining it. Set your white balance, tone curve, and Color Chrome first, shoot some test images, and then fine-tune these settings to taste. A common trap is spending ages adjusting sharpness and grain before the fundamental colour and contrast character is right, which is like choosing a frame before you have finished the painting.

A recipe that looks great on your desk or in your garden is not necessarily a recipe that works. The real test is how it handles the range of situations you actually encounter when you are out shooting. A systematic approach to testing saves you from discovering a recipe's weaknesses at the worst possible moment.

Same Scene, Different Settings

Find a scene with a good mix of elements: some sky, some shadow, some colour, ideally a person or a neutral surface. Shoot it with your recipe, then change one setting, and shoot again. This gives you direct A/B comparisons that reveal exactly what each adjustment does in a real-world context. It is more informative than any written description because you are seeing the effect on your specific scene in your specific light.

Different Scenes, Same Settings

Once you have a recipe you like in one situation, take it out into different conditions. Shoot in direct sun, open shade, overcast sky, and indoor artificial light. Photograph people, food, architecture, foliage, and anything with strong colour. A good all-purpose recipe should produce pleasing results across most of these scenarios. A specialist recipe (designed for street work or landscapes, say) can afford to be weaker in some areas, but you need to know where those weaknesses are so you are not caught off guard.

The Lighting Conditions That Expose Weaknesses

Three conditions reliably reveal problems in a recipe. Mixed artificial light(fluorescent tubes alongside tungsten bulbs, common in shops and offices) exposes white balance issues: if your recipe has a strong colour shift, mixed light will amplify it into something ugly. Harsh midday sun stresses the highlight and shadow handling: if your tone curve is too contrasty, you will lose detail in both ends simultaneously. Deep shade reveals noise reduction and shadow behaviour: if your shadows are set too deep or noise reduction too aggressive, shaded areas will look muddy or plasticky.

You do not need to make your recipe perfect in all three conditions. But you should know how it behaves in each so you can make an informed decision about when to use it and when to switch to something else.

Rather than giving you finished recipes (there are plenty of those in the recipe library), this section walks through the reasoning behind common adjustment patterns. Once you understand the logic, you can apply the same thinking to build any look you want.

The Warm Street Look

Start with Classic Neg. or Classic Chrome. Set white balance to Daylight rather than Auto, which prevents the camera from cooling down warm afternoon light. Add a small red WB shift (+2 or +3) to push things further. Drop highlights by one step to keep bright areas under control in contrasty urban scenes. Set Color Chrome Effect to Weak for better colour gradation in neon signs and shop fronts. Add Weak Small grain for texture.

The logic here: Daylight WB preserves the natural warmth of the scene rather than neutralising it. The red shift amplifies that warmth. Lower highlights prevent the bright, blown-out look that digital cameras default to in high-contrast street scenes. The grain adds analogue character that suits the casual, documentary nature of street work.

The Muted Documentary Look

Start with Classic Chrome, which already does most of the work. Set colour to -1 or -2 to desaturate further. Raise shadow tone by one step to deepen the blacks and add visual weight. Set sharpness to -1 for a slightly softer rendering. Use Auto WB so the camera adapts to changing conditions.

The logic: Classic Chrome's muted palette and deep shadow character are the foundation. Pulling colour down takes it from "photographic" into "editorial" territory. The deeper shadows add the rich, heavy feel of magazine photography. Lower sharpness avoids the hyper-crisp digital look that fights against the film-era aesthetic you are going for.

The Clean Portrait Look

Start with REALA ACE (on X-Trans V bodies) or Astia (on older bodies). Set white balance to Auto or Shade (Shade adds warmth that flatters skin). Leave colour at 0 or -1 to keep skin tones natural without going flat. Set noise reduction to -2 or -3 to preserve skin texture without smoothing it away. Turn Color Chrome Effect to Weak. Leave grain off, as it can interfere with the clean skin rendering you want.

The logic: REALA ACE and Astia both handle skin with care, preserving natural tones without the saturation bumps that Velvia or even Provia can introduce. Shade WB adds a gentle warmth that makes people look healthy. Low noise reduction preserves the texture and detail in skin that makes portraits feel real rather than airbrushed. No grain because skin is the one subject where grain can work against you, adding texture to a surface that usually looks better smooth.

The Vivid Landscape Look

Start with Velvia for maximum colour punch, or Classic Chrome if you prefer a more atmospheric approach. For Velvia, pull highlights down by one or two steps to recover sky detail and set Color Chrome Effect to Strong to improve the gradation in saturated foliage and sunsets. Set dynamic range to DR200 if shooting in contrasty conditions. Raise sharpness to +1 or +2 for extra definition in distant detail.

The logic: Velvia's whole purpose is saturated colour, so lean into it. The highlight reduction counteracts its tendency to blow out bright skies. Color Chrome Effect on Strong is appropriate here (where Weak is usually enough for other genres) because landscapes routinely contain large areas of highly saturated colour that benefit from the improved gradation. DR200 gives you an extra stop of highlight headroom at the cost of a minimum ISO of twice your camera's base, which is rarely a problem outdoors.

A recipe is never truly finished. The ones you use most will evolve as your eye develops, as the seasons change, and as you encounter situations that reveal something you want to adjust. This is normal and good. A recipe that you refine over months is almost always better than one you finalised in an afternoon.

Seasonal Light Changes

The quality of natural light shifts dramatically through the year. Winter light is cooler, lower in angle, and softer. Summer light is warmer, harsher, and higher. A recipe tuned for golden autumn afternoons may feel too warm in the cool, flat light of January. Rather than constantly adjusting your base recipe, consider creating a seasonal variant. A small white balance shift, perhaps +1 or +2 warmer for winter to compensate for the cooler ambient light, can be enough to maintain the mood of your recipe across the year.

When to Make a Variant vs Modify the Original

If you find yourself changing one or two settings regularly for specific situations, make a variant and save it to a separate custom bank. A "bright conditions" version with lower highlights and higher dynamic range, or a "low light" version with lifted shadows and no grain, takes seconds to set up and saves you from tweaking in the field. Reserve changes to the original recipe for when your fundamental taste shifts, not for situational adjustments.

How to Know When a Recipe Is Done Enough

A recipe is ready to use consistently when it produces results you are happy with in the majority of the conditions you shoot in. Not all conditions, the majority. If you find yourself wanting to change a setting after eight out of ten shoots, it is not ready yet. If you only want to change something after one or two unusual shoots (harsh mixed lighting, extreme backlight), the recipe is solid and those are situational problems best handled by switching to a different recipe or making a quick adjustment.

The trap to avoid is endless refinement. There comes a point where you are making changes that you would never notice in a real photograph, and at that point you are optimising for the settings screen rather than for the final image. If your images look good to you and to the people you share them with, the recipe is done.

If you have built a recipe that you are proud of, sharing it on X-Alchemy lets other photographers benefit from your work. But a recipe listing is only as useful as the information that accompanies it. A bare list of settings with no context is hard to evaluate and easy to scroll past.

Describe the Look, Not Just the Settings

Tell people what the recipe does to an image, not just what the numbers are. "Warm, slightly desaturated look with deep shadows and soft highlights, inspired by 1970s colour negative film" tells a potential user far more than "Classic Neg., Colour -1, Shadow +1." The settings are there for them to read; your description should convey the feel.

Be Honest About Where It Works Best

Every recipe has conditions where it shines and conditions where it struggles. Saying "works best in warm, natural light; can look muddy under fluorescent lighting" is more helpful than claiming it works everywhere. Photographers appreciate honesty because it helps them decide whether the recipe suits their shooting style before they spend time entering the settings.

Include Camera Compatibility

Mention which camera you developed the recipe on and which generation it requires. A recipe using Nostalgic Neg. or REALA ACE is X-Trans V only. A recipe built on Classic Neg. needs at least an X-Trans IV body. Specifying this up front saves people the frustration of entering settings only to discover they cannot select the simulation.

Sample Images Help

If you can include sample images, do. They do not need to be portfolio-quality masterpieces. A few honest examples showing the recipe in different light and with different subjects gives people a real sense of what to expect. One image in golden hour and one on an overcast day is more useful than five images that all look the same.