Which Retrica Filter Should You Use? A Guide by Situation

Retrica has 388 filters. Scrolling through all of them to find the right one for the photo in front of you isn't practical.

This guide works backward from the situation. Find what you're shooting, and start with the sets built for it.

Portraits and selfies

Start with: Bestie, Allure

Faces need low contrast and warm color. Filters built for landscapes usually push saturation in ways that wreck skin tone, and heavy grain reads as skin texture problems on a close-up.

Bestie (NATURAL, FAB, CUTIE, BOO, CHILL) is built for this, and several presets include a light smoothing pass.

Allure (SORA, SUJI, NAAK, AZRA, AVA) contains the two most-used filters in the entire library: AZRA and SUJI. Both lean warm, both flatter skin. That they top the usage charts across all 388 presets is a reasonable signal.

Also worth trying: ROSY&S adds warmth through red rather than yellow, which sits better on most skin tones than a golden push.

Avoid: Cinema, Faded, and anything with heavy grain or a strong vignette.

Food

Start with: Dig in, EARL&S

Food wants moderate saturation and warmth that doesn't tip into yellow. The most common mistake is a filter that boosts color hard, which turns tomatoes orange and greens neon.

Dig in (NOMNOM, SOTASTY, YUMMM) is built specifically for food.

EARL&S intensifies color about a step while lifting highlights, which suits dishes where color is the main appeal.

For pale food on white plates: the Bright presets in Easy Adjust Kit, or the Marble set (SIENA, MARMO, CHIARA, ANTICO, RICO), keep highlights clean rather than adding warmth or fade.

Avoid: heavy grain and strong vignettes. Both fight the clean, fresh look that makes food appealing.

Night and low light

Start with: Nighttone, Deep

Nighttone (the NGT and NTVS series) is built for dark scenes, and several of its presets rank among the more heavily used filters in the app, which suggests they hold up in real conditions.

Deep (DEEP G, SLATE, TEAL, GRZLD, PURPLE) leans into darker, richer color rather than trying to brighten everything. This suits night scenes better than a filter that lifts shadows, which tends to expose noise.

Also worth trying: black and white. Removing color removes the mixed-lighting white balance problem entirely, and grain reads as texture rather than as an error.

Indoor and café

Start with: Cocoa Nights, UDTONES

Indoor lighting is warm, and the instinct to correct that away removes the reason the scene looked good.

Cocoa Nights (AGLOW, HYGGE, VIVIEN, EARL, SPARKLE, ROSY, CARAMEL, FRPAGE) leans into warm browns, ambers, and low indoor light.

UDTONES gives photos the look of tungsten lighting: warm, slightly golden, softened. SUJI goes further in the same direction with added bloom around bright areas.

Outdoors and daylight

Start with: AZRA, Tokyo

AZRA brightens and renders greens noticeably greener, which is why it works well outdoors where there's foliage to work with. It's the most-used filter in the library.

Tokyo (SAKURA, UMI, MOMIJI, UKI) pushes bright, high-saturation daylight with a warm white balance shift. Good for clear skies and daytime urban scenes.

Also worth trying: Greenaholic (PISTA, LIME, MINT, AVOCADO, OLIVE) for green-forward scenes, and Island (CAPRI, CORSICA, STRN) for water and coast.

Vintage and film looks

Start with: Cinema, Faded, Antique

Cinema (K-MAX, SPARTAN, T-LC, PRCS2, VINTAGE, HACKER, HORROR, 2STRIP, T-HC) is built around a movie-still feeling: desaturated, grainy, high-contrast, often monochrome.

Faded (FADED, HEZE, EXPIRED, MMTS, TOASTER, AM, INKWELL, KELVIN, H5, WALDEN, HUDSON) gives washed-out, low-contrast looks with the character of expired film.

Antique (RIGEL, HEZE, PROPUS, SARIR, POLARIS, MIZAR, NAVI, ZOSMA, AIN) leans aged and slightly yellowed.

Flat Color Series (SCANNER, SCANNED, GRDAY, BALZAC, SILVER, 925, FLOS, SL0001, DOWNEY, NOIR, ESME) flattens the tonal curve the way a scanned print does.

Black and white

Start with: Black&White, Silver

Black&White covers a wide range of contrast and grain across 19 presets, from clean editorial monochrome (B&W, TALINI) to heavily grained and high-contrast (INFRRD, K-MAX).

Silver is a tighter selection with a colder, more metallic cast.

Monochrome is also the best fallback for any photo where the color is a problem: mixed lighting, unflattering skin tone, or a scene where color is distracting rather than helping.

When you know the fix, not the mood

Start with: Easy Adjust Kit

Sometimes the photo is nearly right and needs one adjustment rather than an aesthetic. Easy Adjust Kit is organized by direction rather than mood:

• Brighter: BRIGHT, LLIGHT, BRIGHTV

• More vivid: VIVID

• More faded: FADED, WRFADED, CLFADED

• Warmer: WARM, GOLD, CLGOLD

• Cooler: COOL, COLD1, CLROSE

• Muted monochrome: MUTEDBW

Faster than browsing the aesthetic sets when you already know what's wrong.

If you don't know where to start

Retrica Classics is a curated cross-section pulled from across the library: LAGOM, HYGGE, FIKA, CORSICA, CHAI, ROOIBOS, EARL, RELEVÉ, TENDU, NATURAL, FAB, SUJI, AZRA, AVA, SHINE, SPARKLE, PEWPEW, and more. It's a faster starting point than scrolling everything.

Or start with AZRA. It's the most-used filter in the app for a reason, and it works across more situations than most.

More than 260 of Retrica's 388 presets are free, including all the most-used ones. Filter sets change as the library is updated.