diff --git a/docsite/rst/playbooks_filters.rst b/docsite/rst/playbooks_filters.rst
index 05ff830e3b..8b23166ea8 100644
--- a/docsite/rst/playbooks_filters.rst
+++ b/docsite/rst/playbooks_filters.rst
@@ -25,6 +25,11 @@ For human readable output, you can use::
     {{ some_variable | to_nice_json }}
     {{ some_variable | to_nice_yaml }}
 
+It's also possible to change the indentation of both::
+
+    {{ some_variable | to_nice_json(indent=2) }}
+    {{ some_variable | to_nice_yaml(indent=8) }}
+
 Alternatively, you may be reading in some already formatted data::
 
     {{ some_variable | from_json }}
diff --git a/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py b/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py
index 0529e87b03..ea5bb67be8 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py
@@ -75,16 +75,16 @@ def to_yaml(a, *args, **kw):
     transformed = yaml.dump(a, Dumper=AnsibleDumper, allow_unicode=True, **kw)
     return to_unicode(transformed)
 
-def to_nice_yaml(a, *args, **kw):
+def to_nice_yaml(a, indent=4, *args, **kw):
     '''Make verbose, human readable yaml'''
-    transformed = yaml.dump(a, Dumper=AnsibleDumper, indent=4, allow_unicode=True, default_flow_style=False, **kw)
+    transformed = yaml.dump(a, Dumper=AnsibleDumper, indent=indent, allow_unicode=True, default_flow_style=False, **kw)
     return to_unicode(transformed)
 
 def to_json(a, *args, **kw):
     ''' Convert the value to JSON '''
     return json.dumps(a, cls=AnsibleJSONEncoder, *args, **kw)
 
-def to_nice_json(a, *args, **kw):
+def to_nice_json(a, indent=4, *args, **kw):
     '''Make verbose, human readable JSON'''
     # python-2.6's json encoder is buggy (can't encode hostvars)
     if sys.version_info < (2, 7):
@@ -99,9 +99,10 @@ def to_nice_json(a, *args, **kw):
                 pass
             else:
                 if major >= 2:
-                    return simplejson.dumps(a, indent=4, sort_keys=True, *args, **kw)
+                    return simplejson.dumps(a, indent=indent, sort_keys=True, *args, **kw)
+
     try:
-        return json.dumps(a, indent=4, sort_keys=True, cls=AnsibleJSONEncoder, *args, **kw)
+        return json.dumps(a, indent=indent, sort_keys=True, cls=AnsibleJSONEncoder, *args, **kw)
     except:
         # Fallback to the to_json filter
         return to_json(a, *args, **kw)