One of the hazards I’ve run into now that I’m really digging into the film simulation capabilities of the Fuji X cameras is keeping track of which recipe I used on a particular image. I often shoot the same scene with multiple recipes to compare/contrast. Sure, I could do this in Fuji X Raw Studio, but I find it’s easier to do it the old fashioned way. The downside is that sometimes I don’t record it accurately in my pocket notebook. Or I leave my pencil behind like I did today. That’s where exiftool can come in handy.

If you’re not familiar with it, exiftool is a very power command line utility for reading/writing image data (EXIF, IPTC, etc.) You can read everything or just a particular group of data. In its most simple form, you simple pass it the image filename.

$ exiftool _DSF3660.JPG
ExifTool Version Number         : 12.55
File Name                       : _DSF3660.JPG
Directory                       : .
File Size                       : 16 MB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2023:07:22 17:09:36-04:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2023:07:22 17:09:36-04:00
File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2023:07:22 17:09:36-04:00
File Permissions                : -rwxrwxrwx
File Type                       : JPEG
File Type Extension             : jpg
MIME Type                       : image/jpeg
Exif Byte Order                 : Little-endian (Intel, II)
Make                            : FUJIFILM
Camera Model Name               : X-H1

There isn’t a lot here that’s real useful, so let’s see what Fuji writes to the image.

$ exiftool -a -G1 -FujiFilm:All -u -sort _DSF3707.JPG | head -25
[FujiFilm]      AF Area Mode                    : Single Point
[FujiFilm]      AF Area Point Size              : 6
[FujiFilm]      AF Area Zone Size               : n/a
[FujiFilm]      AF Mode                         : Single Point
[FujiFilm]      AF-C Priority                   : Release
[FujiFilm]      AF-C Setting                    : Set 1 (multi-purpose)
[FujiFilm]      AF-C Speed Tracking Sensitivity : 0
[FujiFilm]      AF-C Tracking Sensitivity       : 2
[FujiFilm]      AF-C Zone Area Switching        : Auto
[FujiFilm]      AF-S Priority                   : Release
[FujiFilm]      Auto Bracketing                 : On
[FujiFilm]      Blur Warning                    : None
[FujiFilm]      Color Chrome Effect             : Off
[FujiFilm]      Color Temperature               : 5300
[FujiFilm]      Development Dynamic Range       : 400
[FujiFilm]      Drive Mode                      : Continuous Low
[FujiFilm]      Drive Speed                     : 4 fps
[FujiFilm]      Dynamic Range                   : Standard
[FujiFilm]      Dynamic Range Setting           : Manual
[FujiFilm]      Exposure Count                  : 1
[FujiFilm]      Exposure Warning                : Good
[FujiFilm]      Faces Detected                  : 0
[FujiFilm]      Film Mode                       : F1b/Studio Portrait Smooth Skin Tone (Astia)

Now we’re getting some cool stuff. I can see things like the Color Temperature and even the Film Mode (sim) that I used. Unfortunately, Fuji doesn’t write the custom setting anywhere (at least that I’ve been able to find). Let’s break down today’s outing…

I tested three different recipes today: Nurture Nature, my own Florida Summer, and Kodak Ektar 100. The wonderful thing is that they each have their own white balance: Auto, 5300K, and 5300K respectively. This is where things get a little tricky. If you have a custom WB set, Color Temperature gets set to “Kelvin”. In the case of the Nurture Nature recipe, since WB is Auto, Color Temperature doesn’t get set.

In order to be able to properly identify the images once I import them to Lightroom, I need to set the User Comment EXIF field to hold the recipe name. Here are the commands for each of the three recipes:

$ exiftool -UserComment="Nurture Nature" -if '$WhiteBalance eq "Auto"' .
$ exiftool -UserComment="Florida Summer" -if '$ColorTemperature eq "5300"' .
$ exiftool -UserComment="Kodak Ektar 100" -if '$ColorTemperature eq "5900"' .

This is a very simple command which, in the first case looks at the “White Balance” field (note that white space is removed in the exiftool tag names) and if it’s set to “Auto”, it set the “User Comment” to “Nurture Nature”. Similarly, in the next two examples, it looks at the actual Color Temperature and sets the field accordingly.

$ exiftool -a -G1 -EXIF:All -u -sort _DSF3660.JPG _DSF3706.JPG _DSF3707.JPG | grep "User Comment"
[ExifIFD]       User Comment                    : Nurture Nature
[ExifIFD]       User Comment                    : Kodak Ektar 100
[ExifIFD]       User Comment                    : Florida Summer

Now I can see the recipe displayed in Lightroom!

To filter your images, choose “Any Searchable Field”, “Contains”, and the value you want to search.

Now for the bad news. I forgot that I did snap a few black and white shots today. Apparently that recipe also uses auto white balance which through my brilliant command off. But, despite this, I only have a handful that I need to re-label and it still saved me a ton of work and churn to correctly identify each recipe.

If you found this post useful, please let me know in the comments.