Riviera: A Creamy, Mediterranean-Inspired Fujifilm Classic Chrome Recipe (X100VI & X-E5)

Riviera is a custom Fujifilm Classic Chrome recipe for the X100VI and X-E5 that creates a soft, creamy, Mediterranean-inspired look: warm peachy skin tones, true-tone creamy whites, and quiet muted scenery, all straight out of camera. It's built to capture that early-morning, sun-on-warm-stone feeling without heavy editing. Below, I'll walk through what the look is, who it's for, and then the full recipe and exactly how to shoot it.

What is the Riviera recipe?

I keep thinking about early mornings in Positano: that hour when the sun is just high enough to warm the stone but still soft, before the day goes harsh. Everything glows in the same warm, cohesive tone. Skin, water, pale buildings, all belonging to one palette. Nothing fights. It's the kind of warmth you feel more than you see.

Riviera is my attempt to bottle that feeling as a Fujifilm recipe. It's soft and creamy, with whites that stay true and skin that glows just slightly peachy, the way it does in that early Mediterranean light. It's built on the Classic Chrome film simulation, which is a bit of a departure from my usual Reala Ace recipes, and it does something I didn't expect: it shape-shifts depending on what you point it at.

Why does Riviera look different on skin versus scenery?

Point Riviera at a person and it goes warm and golden. Point it at water or scenery, and it pulls dreamy and cool. One recipe, two moods, the same cohesive feeling running through both.

That happens because Classic Chrome is a lower-saturation, slightly cooler base simulation, and Riviera's warmth is tuned through white balance rather than the film sim itself. Warm tones like skin and stone soak up that warmth and glow peachy, while cool subjects like water and sky stay muted and restrained. It's why a whole set shot on Riviera feels cohesive: the warm frames and the cool frames still belong to the same world.

Who is this recipe for?

Riviera is for X100VI and X-E5 shooters who want a soft, editorial, film-inspired look straight out of camera, especially for travel, coastal, and lifestyle photography. If you love warm-but-not-orange skin tones, creamy highlights, and a cohesive palette across a whole gallery, this is for you. If you want punchy, high-saturation, vivid colour, this isn't that recipe: Riviera is deliberately quiet.

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