Rainy day time with X Raw Studio

I don't think I'd like it as my primary workflow tool, but I do love X Raw Studio for modeling in-camera effects on a Fujifilm camera.

You hook up your camera (it becomes a very expensive image co-processor), load up a raw file in the software, and have access to all the in-camera settings you'd find on the camera itself: You can cycle between film simulations, tone settings, etc. then name and save the preset to your camera.

Whenever a new simulation lands, I'm always squinting and trying to make sense of how it fits in with all the others. With X Raw Studio, it's simple to cycle through all of them and compare.

I also find it helpful for figuring out monochrome settings, because there are all those color filter variants on Acros, and they interact differently with different tones. It's helpful to take a set of images and work through the four Acros variants and fiddle with the shadow/highlight tone controls. I came across a  Gordon Parks video gallery today that had me thinking about all the different monochrome styles I like, from his, to Daido Moriyama's to Mary Ellen Mark's. I like using X Raw Studio to help me think about what I'm seeing and appreciating in each, and how to translate it. 

I'm not ready to completely discard my raw orientation, but I continue to think about what I'm trying to do with my photography. This afternoon I just thought about a few of my photographic moods and committed them to presets. I never really set that up on my X-T5, but now they're there, and the camera's set up to send raws to one slot and jpegs to the other.