Why I Shoot JPEG and Barely Touch Lightroom

There's a folder on my drive that every photographer secretly has. Thousands of RAW files, shot with the best intentions, waiting for an edit that is never coming. For years I told myself I'd get to them. I never did, and somewhere along the way I realised the backlog wasn't a discipline problem. It was a workflow problem. These days most of my personal photos are finished the moment I press the shutter, and I barely open Lightroom at all.

That shift came from shooting Fujifilm, and more specifically from learning to trust the JPEG. Here's why I made the switch, and why I think a lot of photographers would be happier if they did too.

The Backlog That Never Cleared

The RAW workflow makes a quiet promise. Shoot flat, capture everything, and sort it out later. On paid, critical work that promise is worth keeping, and I still shoot that way when the job demands it. But for the personal work, the stuff nobody's paying me for, "later" turned out to be the problem. As I wrote about the X-E5, the everyday camera has the hardest job of any of them, and nothing kills the joy of it faster than knowing every frame comes with homework attached.

I wasn't editing to make photos better. I was editing because the file wasn't finished, and a folder of unfinished files is a folder you learn to avoid. The photos I loved most were often the ones I never got around to touching.

Finishing the Photo in Front of the Scene

Fujifilm's film simulations changed that, because they move the editing to where I'd rather do it, in front of the scene instead of in front of a screen. When I set a film recipe before I shoot, I'm making the colour and tone decisions with the light right there in front of me, not guessing at them from a thumbnail three days later. Choosing the recipe becomes part of reading the frame.

The result is a JPEG that already looks the way I want it to. No slider marathon, no catching up. I press the shutter and the photo is done, ready to share before I've even left the street. That immediacy is the whole reason I built X-Alchemy, a community library where photographers share the recipes they've dialled in, so getting a look you love into your camera is a case of copying a few settings rather than starting from a blank menu.

RAW Is Still in My Pocket

None of this means throwing the safety net away. I shoot RAW and JPEG together, always. The JPEG is the finished photo I actually use, and the RAW sits quietly on the card for the rare frame that needs rescuing, the one where I badly misjudged the exposure or the white balance went sideways under mixed light.

The honest truth is that it almost never does, and that's the point. Having the RAW there means committing to the JPEG costs me nothing. I get a finished file the moment I shoot, and a full-latitude backup for the handful of times a year I'm glad of it. For genuinely critical work, or when the light is doing something I know I'll want to wrestle with properly, I'll still lean on the RAW. The rest of the time it stays in my pocket, untouched, exactly where I want it.

The Recipe Is the Whole Trick

Shooting JPEG only works if the JPEG is worth keeping, and that comes down entirely to the recipe. Get it right and the camera hands you a photo with real character straight out of the box. Get it wrong and you're back to editing, which rather defeats the purpose.

That's the part worth spending time on, and it's genuinely good fun. The Fujifilm community has produced some brilliant recipes over the years, and a couple are more than enough to show what a good one can do. Classic Cuban Negative by Osan Bilgi has a warm, faded documentary look that's tailor-made for the street, and Reggie's Superia leans into grain and contrast while holding on to rich, true skin tones. Load either into a custom slot and you'll see what I mean about finishing the photo in the camera.

Building your own is where it gets properly addictive, and X-Alchemy exists so you don't have to start every look from scratch, and so you've got somewhere to keep and share the ones you land on. You can find the recipes I've created here. Once a few of your own are dialled in, you might be surprised how rarely Lightroom gets a look in.