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Nikon Recipe Options

Talking about Nikon Imaging Cloud also known as Nikon Recipes.

Nikon Recipes Screenshot
Nikon Recipes Screenshot (view full res)

Nikon's most recent announcement with the Nikon Z6III had a short little excerpt that talked about film simulations, picture recipes, or as they called it, Imaging Recipes. They called it by a few different names or titles... the language from Nikon was in the quote below.

Nikon Imaging Cloud.

UPDATE: Nikon Imaging Cloud is now live as of July 10th 2024. You can sign up for an account and then connect your camera (right now the Nikon Z6iii) to get started with the service.

(1) Nikon Imaging Cloud is a complimentary cloud service that expands the capabilities and connectivity of your Z6III. (2) Stylize your photos & videos with downloadable camera presets. (3) Looking to add a different look, color effect or technique to your work? (4) Imaging Recipes provide all the ingredients you need–inspiring stories, suggested camera settings, plus Cloud Picture Control presets you can download to your camera.

It was so short I wondered if anyone noticed, but I did, and I have been waiting for a better way to use and create preset-recipes on my Nikon gear, and I really hope this isn't exclusive to the Nikon Z6III. From the explanation on the Nikon Imaging Cloud website, it sounds like an expansion of their Picture Controls (which I first talked about on this site way back in 2008 in Nikon Picture Control Modes and Nikon Capture Review, Part 1 and Update Old Photos with New Nikon Picture Controls, Part 2 on how to use Nikon Capture NX).

Tip: Create your own Picture Control presets using Flexible Color Picture Control in Nikon NX Studio.

This time it looks like you will still need to use Nikon's software to do this since they added the statement at the bottom in fine print about using NX Studio. 🤷‍♂️

Nikon Picture Recipes

The concept of this comes directly from Fujifilm in their Film Simulations, and while Nikon doesn't do "film" simulations, they do Picture Profiles, which create a preset of sorts. It's still far better than what I could get from Sony (or perhaps Canon, I have no idea), but it wasn't a full-blown "Nikon recipe" that you could create, save, and use down the road to create SOOC JPGs that look like your recipe.

Now that they have made this announcement, I am making this page as a placeholder for any Nikon Recipes I can find. For the most part, Ritchie Roesch at FujiXWeekly is the only one I know of that has created any and posted them, and he has 18 different ones available which I will link to below. Who knows, down the line I might take this page and make nikonrecipes.com its own site, but for now, I'm just collecting different ones that eventually we might be able to use when the Nikon Imaging Cloud service is actually launched (it was announced with the Nikon Z6III but apparently, for now, is just a placeholder).

Full disclaimer, I have no association with Nikon or Fujifilm or any other camera company; I am just a user of gear (though I did pre-order the Nikon Z6III). Hopefully this is just the beinning of what we can do, and I hope it isn't going to be limited to just the Nikon Z6III.

Current Nikon Recipes

Below are recipes I've currently looked at from FujiXWeekly.

I am sure there are others out there, I just haven't had time to fully research them yet, so if you know of others I can include here just leave me a note in the comments.

Update as of June 2025: I recently found another set of Nikon Recipes from this site as well . He looks to have a good list of options going so check out onecameraonelens.

Also, the Nikon Imaging Cloud does work ok if you have a camera that is compatible, like the Z6iii. Setting it up initially is a bit of work, there is no way to search the recipes available, you just get a list of contributors, and there don't seem to be very many "film simulation" type recipes right now. Transferring takes more steps than I would like, but it's easier than entering all the data parts one at a time in camera.

Will This Matter?

Graffiti on CSX Train in Opelika
Graffiti on CSX Train in Opelika (no film simulation applied) (view full res)

I would love for Nikon to take this seriously and develop some official film simulations. I'm at the point where I'm not going to jump ship to Fujifilm anymore just to get their film simulations, but to have both good recipes and high quality imaging all in one package from Nikon would be outstanding.

Something odd to me is that when I shoot with Fujifilm cameras, I want to use all the cool film simulations I can find. I want stylized JPG's SOOC. But when I shoot with my Nikon equipment, I tend to look for the sharpest cleanest image I can get. Stylizing an image with a film simulation tends to degrade the image on some level, so I'm wondering if this will really even matter to the majority of Nikon users. I'm not sure what the psychology behind the statement above, but I just don't crave those film simulations when shooting Nikon, the images SOOC are always incredible looking, with amazing colors.