Sun Bleached

Sun-drenched, high-key, cyan sky over warm ground, the look trade sources describe as the tasteful descendant of teal-and-orange: cool skies and water, warm skin and earth, without the crushed teal shadows that date a grade. Poolside, coastline, white walls in hard sun, desert afternoons. Original creative design, see the creative README. Rationale in the notes.

This is teal-and-orange with the volume down. The complementary split is the whole appeal, and it is also the most over-done grade of the last decade. The difference here is where the split lives: it sits in the highlights and mid-tones, not in crushed shadows.

Why

• Classic Chrome supplies the restraint. Fujifilm's own design notes say the mode removed the magenta component from skies and suppresses saturation and shifts the hue of reds and greens: so skies land pale and airy rather than poster-blue, and the warm side reads terracotta rather than orange. It is the least likely base to tip into cliché.
• Color Chrome FX Blue Weak: the single control that supplies the "teal". One notch only. Strong on this base fights the very magenta-suppression that makes the sky look expensive. (This is also why the recipe is X-Trans V native, see the X-Trans V & Recipe Conversion Notes IV→V rule.)
• WB +2R/−4B: warmth on skin and ground, while CCFXB holds the sky cool. The two controls are pulling in opposite directions on purpose. That opposition is the grade.
• Highlight −1, Shadow −1: open at both ends. Bleached light is not contrasty. It is bright and slightly washed. Crushing the shadows here is what makes teal-orange look dated.
• Exposure +2/3 to +1: the look is overexposed by design. Underexpose it and it collapses into an ordinary warm recipe.

Tuning

• More Mediterranean / poolside: CCFXB Strong, Color +2.
• Softer, hazier, more "35 mm holiday": Clarity −2, Exposure +1.
• Skin running too warm against the sky: WB Red to +1, keep Blue at −4.
• Overcast fallback: this look needs sun. In flat light drop CCFXB to Off and treat it as a plain warm recipe, or use Clay Season instead.

Best in

Hard midday and afternoon sun, coast, pools, white and pale architecture, dry landscape, and any scene with both sky and skin in frame, the split needs two subjects to act on.

ISO 500 is the sweet spot, not a compromise (measured 2026-07-27). DR400 pins the ISO floor at 500, and that is exactly where the X-T5's conversion-gain step sits, so it is the cleanest ISO in that region, not a tax you pay for using DR400. ISO 640 is the expensive next click: roughly 0.35 EV of dynamic range for one third-stop, against about 0.02 EV for the step from 400 to 500. In good light, hold ISO at 500 and control exposure with aperture and shutter. Measured from published read-noise and PDR data, see Dynamic Range & Tone Curve, the contrast controls.

Movie-mode adaptation of the stills recipe. Movie mode drops Grain, Color Chrome Effect, Color Chrome FX Blue and Clarity (see Video / Movie Mode, settings, differences, and photo→video translation video-mode-settings). This recipe loses more than most in the conversion. Read the note below before shooting it.

Set these in the movie shooting display → IMAGE QUALITY SETTING tab (stored separately from stills).

The one that actually hurts: Color Chrome FX Blue is gone

CCFXB Weak is the control that supplies the "teal" half of this grade, and movie mode does not have it. Nothing in the movie menu reproduces it. This is a genuine capability gap, not something a substitution hides.

The compensation, and its honest limit: the White Balance is re-weighted to +1 Red / −5 Blue, one notch less red, one notch more blue-withdrawal, which keeps the warm/cool opposition alive by leaning harder on the WB axis. It is not the same thing. WB shifts the whole frame. CCFXB acted selectively on saturated blues, which is why the stills version can hold a cool sky and warm skin. In video the split is shallower.

If the cool sky matters more than the bake-in: shoot F-Log2 and put the split in the grade, where a proper secondary can do what CCFXB did. That is the honest recommendation for this look specifically.

What was dropped, and how it is handled

• Color Chrome FX Blue (Weak): no in-camera substitute: partially offset by the WB re-weighting above. Fully recoverable only in post.
• Color Chrome Effect (Weak): unavailable → Color +2.
• Clarity (−1): unavailable → Sharpness −2.
• Grain (Weak/Small): unavailable → add lightly in post.

Notes

• Needs sun and needs both sky and skin in frame, the grade acts on the opposition between them.
• Expose bright (+2/3 to +1). This look dies when underexposed.

An original creative design, not a film emulation. Settings in the notes. Movie mode in the notes.

The look, and the trap it is avoiding

Cyan sky and water over warm skin and earth, bright and slightly washed. This is the complementary split that trade sources call the most widely used cinematic look in commercial video, and, in the same breath, the one most likely to date a piece of work: "heavy teal-and-orange and extreme purple shadows date a video to 2018."

Both things are true, which is the interesting problem. The split is genuinely pleasing. The cliché comes from where it is applied and how hard. Sun Bleached puts it in the highlights and mid-tones and keeps the shadows open. Crushed teal shadows are the tell, and this recipe does not have them.

Why Classic Chrome

Counter-intuitive for a look that wants a blue sky, and that is exactly why it works.

Fujifilm's own design statements say Classic Chrome "removed the magenta component" from skies, where conventional colour design adds it, and that the mode "controls the saturation and hue of reds and greens." Consequences that suit this grade precisely:

• Skies land pale and airy rather than poster-blue. The teal is then added back by one notch of Color Chrome FX Blue, a controlled amount, on top of a base that will not run away with it.
• Warm tones read terracotta rather than orange. The base's red-hue shift keeps skin and earth from turning into the orange half of the cliché.

It is the least likely base in the camera to tip into parody. A Velvia or Provia version of this look is far harder to keep tasteful.

The opposition that is the grade

WB +2R/−4B pulls the whole frame warm. CCFXB Weak pulls saturated blues cool. They are fighting on purpose, and the result is a frame that is warm where the light falls and cool where the sky is.

That is also why one notch of CCFXB and no more: Strong overrides the magenta-suppression that makes the sky look expensive in the first place, and the grade collapses into ordinary teal-orange.

(Because CCFXB is the load-bearing control, this recipe is X-Trans V native, a IV-era port would need the X-Trans V & Recipe Conversion Notes one-notch rule applied in reverse, and the finding that Sensor Architecture. X-Trans, Bayer, and what GFX actually is blue is where IV and V differ most applies directly here.)

Why the shadows stay open

Highlight −1 and Shadow −1. Open at both ends. Bleached light is bright and low-contrast. It is not moody. Every dated version of this look crushes the shadows to teal. Holding Shadow at −1 is the single choice that keeps it current, and it is the first thing to check if the result looks like a 2018 trailer.

Honest limits

• Original design, not an emulation: the "Original design" tier. Its validation is your eyes and your the test frames.
• It needs sun, and it needs two subjects. The split acts on the opposition between sky and skin. A frame with only one of them gets a plain warm recipe.
• The video version loses its defining control. Movie mode has no Color Chrome FX Blue, and nothing substitutes for it, see the notes, which says so plainly and recommends F-Log2 plus a graded secondary when the cool sky matters.
• Underexposure kills it. Shoot +2/3 to +1.

Last updated: 2026-07-27