Reference

Ricoh GR Image Control, explained

Image Control is the menu that decides how a GR renders a JPEG: which built-in look it starts from, and how nine sliders bend that look. Every recipe on this site is a set of those choices. This page is the reference behind them: which modes each camera has, what each mode is for, and what every slider does in which direction. The slider directions were measured on Ricoh's own published sample frames, because the one people argue about most, Contrast (Shadow), is backwards in most English write-ups.

Two things to hold onto. Image Control changes the JPEG and never the RAW file. And recipe values are absolute slider positions, so a mode that ships with a slider already off zero (Negative Film does) has to be set, not nudged.

Which camera has which modes

• GR III and GR IIIx: Standard, Vivid, Monotone, Soft Monotone, Hard Monotone, Hi-Contrast B&W, Positive Film, Negative Film, Bleach Bypass, Retro, Cross Processing, HDR Tone, plus two custom slots. The two bodies share identical menus. Negative Film needs firmware 1.70 (III) or 1.20 (IIIx); Cross Processing needs 1.30 on the III. Grain exists on the four black and white modes only.
• GR IV and GR IV HDF: the same twelve plus Cinema (Yellow) and Cinema (Green), three custom slots that can be renamed from the app, and grain with a size setting on eight modes: the four black and white modes, Positive Film, Negative Film and both Cinema modes.
• GR IV Monochrome: six modes of its own, Standard, Solid, Soft, High Contrast, Grainy and HDR Tone, plus three custom slots. No white balance, Saturation, Hue or Filter Effect anywhere in its menus.

The color modes

The black and white modes

All four drop Saturation and Hue and add three extras: Toning, a numbered Filter Effect (Off, 1 to 4) and Grain. White balance still matters on a color body shooting black and white, because it feeds the conversion: creators fake a red filter's darker sky with a warm 10000K reference shifted toward magenta, and a blue filter with 2500K shifted toward blue.

The GR IV Monochrome's own modes

These are not renamed copies of the color body's black and white modes. A recipe page's walkthrough maps Monotone to Standard and Hard Monotone or Hi-Contrast B&W to High Contrast; the sliders carry over as written and the white balance line is skipped. The recipes confirmed for it are on the GR IV Monochrome page.

The nine sliders

Every slider runs from -4 to +4 on every body. Which ones a mode exposes varies: the black and white modes hide Saturation and Hue, HDR Tone hides everything but Saturation and Hue. Directions below were measured on the nineteen sample frames Ricoh published for the GR III's launch, the same scene at +4 and -4 for each slider.

The extras

• Toning: on the black and white modes, Bleach Bypass, Retro, HDR Tone and (on the GR IV) both Cinema modes. Its scale and labels differ by mode and body, and Ricoh's own recipes print it both as a name (Purple) and as a number, so follow the recipe's value as written.
• Filter Effect: black and white modes only, numbered Off and 1 to 4. No manual names the colors and the community decodes disagree, so this site prints the number and nothing else.
• Grain: GR III generation, Off, Weak, Medium or Strong (shown on the camera as -, 1, 2, 3) on the black and white modes. GR IV generation, Strength and Size, each in three steps, on eight modes. Porting a GR III grain value to a GR IV, keep the strength and start with Size Small.
• Color Tone: the Cross Processing variant picker, three flavors.
• HDR Tone Level: the strength of the tone mapping on HDR Tone.

White balance, the other half of a recipe

Every white balance mode, including a Kelvin value from 2500K to 10000K, takes a fine-tune shift of up to 14 steps on two axes: amber to blue, and green to magenta. The camera prints the green-magenta value first (G1:A1); this site prints amber first (A1 G1) and always shows both. The shift is the biggest single grading lever on the camera, and it is where most of the difference between two recipes on the same mode lives. The GR IV drops Multi-Auto WB and adds Auto WB (White Priority) and Auto WB (Warmth Priority); GR III recipes that used Multi-Auto load as plain Auto on a GR IV.

GR III recipes on a GR IV

Within a generation a recipe is one-to-one. Across generations the GR IV renders a touch warmer and up to about a third of a stop brighter at identical values, measured by Ritchie Roesch on the same recipe side by side. There is no clean conversion formula; the drift depends on the mode and the light. Rules of thumb that owners use: Key -1 or about -0.3 EV on the IV to match the III's brightness, and one or two steps toward blue or magenta on a fixed white balance to counter the warmth. Recipes with a fixed white balance port more faithfully than Auto WB ones, because the two generations' Auto WB think differently.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between an Image Control and a recipe?

An Image Control is one of the camera's built-in looks (Positive Film, Negative Film, Monotone and so on). A recipe is an Image Control plus the values of its sliders, plus a white balance setting and shift, plus the extras like grain, all saved to a U1, U2 or U3 slot. Every recipe on this site lists exactly that.

Does Image Control change my RAW files?

No. Image Control shapes the JPEG only. A RAW file records what the sensor captured and ignores every slider, which is also why High/Low Key cannot bring back a blown highlight: use exposure compensation for that. The same controls reappear in the camera's RAW development menu, so you can apply a recipe to a RAW after the fact.

Why does my Negative Film shot not match a recipe that says Key 0?

Because recipe values are absolute slider positions, not changes from the default, and Negative Film does not start at zero: it ships with Key +1, Contrast +1 and Contrast (Shadow) -1. A recipe that says Key 0 means you set the slider to 0, one step below the factory position. Standard is the only mode that starts with everything at 0.

Does Contrast (Shadow) minus lift the shadows?

No, it deepens them. Positive lifts. Ricoh's own A/B frames, three Ricoh staff articles and Reggie Ballesteros's walkthrough all agree, and the recipes on this site are described using that rule. If a faded recipe carries Contrast (Shadow) -4, the fade is coming from negative overall Contrast or from the Negative Film base curve, and the -4 is tightening the darks under it.

Which modes does the GR IV have that the GR III does not?

Cinema (Yellow) and Cinema (Green), a third custom slot, and film grain on Positive Film, Negative Film and the two Cinema modes with a size setting as well as strength. The GR III generation only has grain on its four black and white modes. Everything else carries over with the same names.

What do the Filter Effect numbers mean on the black and white modes?

The camera labels them Off and 1 to 4, and no Ricoh manual gives them color names. Community decodes disagree with each other, and creators' own usage contradicts the most common one, so this site prints the number a creator used and nothing more. On the GR IV Monochrome there is no Filter Effect at all; it has a physical red filter in the lens instead.

Put it to work