The Fujifilm Feature Hiding On Your Camera

What that mystery icon means, where Fujifilm puts it on every body, and why almost nobody uses it on purpose.

Yesterday I posted a photo of a small icon on a Fujifilm display and asked people to guess what it means. A lot of people have seen it. Almost nobody knew what it was. That gap, between how often this icon shows up and how few people can identify it, is the whole reason I keep coming back to this feature.

The Partial Color Orange Advanced Filter icon, close-up

This is the icon that started it all. If you have seen it on your Fujifilm and had no idea what it meant, you are not alone.

The Partial Color Orange Advanced Filter feature.

The answer is simple. Your camera is in Advanced Filter mode, and in this case the exact filter behind that icon was Partial Color Orange. The glyph changes depending on which filter is selected, but the meaning is always the same. Your camera is set up to bake a creative look into your JPEG the moment you press the shutter.

Here is the funny part. Most people who see this icon never turned it on. They bumped a dial.

What Advanced Filters Actually Are

Advanced Filters are preset creative looks that Fujifilm applies to your JPEG at the moment of capture. Think of them as the in-camera version of the filters people slapped on phone photos in the early Instagram days, except they are tuned with a little more restraint, and they are running on your real sensor and lens instead of a phone.

The High-Key Option In Advanced Filters

A few people read the word Advanced and assume this must be a serious professional feature. It is not. Longtime Fujifilm shooters joke that the name should really be Adventure, not Advanced, because this is a play tool. That is the right expectation to have going in.

There are seven effect filters and six Partial Color variants on most current bodies:

• Toy Camera: a vignetted, warm, retro look
• Miniature: blurs the top and bottom of the frame and keeps a band sharp, faking a tilt-shift diorama
• Pop Color: high contrast and saturated color
• High-Key: bright, airy, low contrast
• Low-Key: dark and moody, with only a few highlights standing out
• Dynamic Tone: a heavy fantasy tone curve, HDR-ish
• Soft Focus: even, dreamy softness across the whole image
• Partial Color (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple): keeps one color and turns everything else black and white

Partial Color is the one that reads as a deliberate creative choice rather than a gimmick.

If you remember Fisheye and Cross Screen, sometimes labeled Star, from an older X body, those are gone. The modern lineup dropped both. What you get today is the list above.

On some Fujifilm bodies the feature lives on the drive dial as ADV. On others it sits on the mode dial as FILTER. Same thing, different door.

Location of Advanced Filters setting on Fujifilm X-T3

Location of Filter Setting on Fujifilm X-S20

Don’t Confuse These With Film Simulations

This is the single most common mistake people make. Film Simulations are color science profiles. PROVIA, VELVIA, CLASSIC CHROME, ACROS, NOSTALGIC NEG. You can pair them with any shooting mode and recover them fully from RAW.

ASTIA/SOFT Fujifilm Film Simulation

Advanced Filters are effects. Blur, color isolation, tone crush, vignettes. They live in a dedicated mode with real shooting restrictions attached while you are in it. Once the JPEG is written, the filter is baked. There is no going back to before.

You Cannot Add These Later

This is worth its own section, because it changes how you should shoot. Advanced Filters happen at capture, and only at capture. No Fujifilm software puts one back on afterward. X RAW Studio and in-camera RAW conversion both only re-apply Film Simulations, not filters. So if you shot a scene as a plain frame and later wish you had used Toy Camera or Miniature, there is no menu anywhere that does it for you.

The one near-exception is Partial Color. It is really the MONOCHROME film simulation with a single color held back, so you can get reasonably close to that look after the fact. The optical and tonal filters, Miniature, Toy Camera, Soft Focus, Dynamic Tone, are a different story. You cannot rebuild them from a film sim. They have to be captured in the moment.

That is exactly why the next setting matters.

The One Setting That Makes This Risk-Free

If you take nothing else from this piece, take t

Fujifilm Menu Setting For Shooting Both RAW and JPEG files.

his. Always shoot RAW plus JPEG when you are in filter mode.

The filter only touches the JPEG. The RAW underneath stays clean. So you walk away with two files: the creative shot you just took, and an untouched version of the exact same frame. If you decide a week later that the filter was a mistake, you go back to the RAW and it is as if you never applied it.

Once you are in the right mode, this is the menu you scroll through to pick your filter.

This is the move that lets you experiment freely. Since there is no way to add a filter back later, the clean RAW is your safety net. Worst case, you delete a JPEG.

Original frame and the Partial Color (Orange) version. The JPEG carries the filter. The RAW underneath stays untouched.

Where Fujifilm Hides It (This Is The Part That Confuses Everyone)

Here is the real reason that icon catches people out. Fujifilm has moved this feature around the body over the years, and the location depends on which camera you own.

• X-S20, X-S10, and the newer mode-dial bodies: the mode dial has a position literally labeled FILTER. Rotate to it and head into SHOOTING SETTING.
• X-T5: the drive dial has an ADV. position. Rotate to it and head into DRIVE SETTING then ADV. FILTER SETTING.
• X-T3: there is no FILTER spot to find on top. Look at the ring underneath the ISO dial. That collar is the drive setting, and it has an ADV. position. Rotate to it and the filter menu opens.
• X-T30, X-T20: the drive dial has two slots, Adv.1 and Adv.2. You can preset a different filter in each.
• X100 series, X-Pro, X-E (no drive dial): there is no dial position at all. Press the DRIVE button and choose ADVANCED FILTER from the menu.

Miniature is a crowd pleaser. Top and bottom blur out, the middle band stays sharp, and you get a tilt-shift diorama for free.

Same feature, different front doors. When someone tells me they cannot find Advanced Filters on their camera, the answer is almost always that they are looking on the wrong dial.

Things To Watch For

A few honest limitations to plan around.

There is no histogram while you are in filter mode. You are flying blind on exposure, so watch your highlights and dial back exposure compensation when something looks bright.

Live Histogram Not Available When Shooting With Fujifilm Advanced Filters

Manual focus is locked out. Single (S) and Continuous autofocus both work while a filter is active, but Manual (M) focus does not. Flip the focus switch to M in this mode and the camera simply will not focus for you.

Advanced Filters Will Not Work In Manual Focus Mode

Metering is grayed out. Fujifilm locks the photometry mode while a filter is active, so you cannot swap between multi, spot, and the rest. The camera makes that call for you.

This is a stills feature. Advanced Filters do not apply to video, so do not go hunting for them on the movie side.

Advanced Filters Will Not Work On Movie Mode

If you decide a filter was the wrong choice, the clean RAW is right there. Open it, ignore the JPEG, and the photo is as if you never used a filter at all.

The Bottom Line

Advanced Filters are a fun creative tool that almost everyone owns and almost nobody uses. They sit somewhere between Film Simulations and a phone editing app, with the convenience of being baked right into your camera. They are not a feature that will change how you shoot, but they will occasionally hand you a frame you would never have thought to build in post.

Shoot RAW plus JPEG so there is zero risk. Assign the filter select to a function button so it is not a chore to switch. Find a scene with one bold color, try Partial Color Orange, and see what you get.

And if that little icon shows up in the corner of your screen and you never asked for it, now you know exactly what to do.

*Chris Lee is the host of pal2tech, a YouTube channel focused on Fujifilm photography, camera techniques, and practical photography education. New videos publish weekly at youtube.com/@pal2tech.*