How can I add realistic film-like grain to digital photos in Photoshop or other apps?

Asked 1/31/2014

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I like the look of film grain seen in work by photographers such as Daido Moriyama and others. Is it possible to create convincing analog-style grain on digital images in post-processing? I’m especially interested in Photoshop, but other software is fine too. What methods produce a natural-looking result rather than obvious digital noise?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

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There are multiple solutions for that:

On a vanilla factory Adobe Photoshop without any plugins:

What I use to do is to create a 50% gray layer ( rgb(128, 128, 128) ) that I put in one of the following blending modes: Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light, doing so your layer won't have any effect because those blending modes are 50% gray centered. Then I do a 'Add Noise...' filter, don't put it too strong, 50% is a good start, you will be able to dial it down afterward anyway, distribution is a matter of taste.

Then the trick is to adjust the grain size is to blur your layer however blurring everything at the same value would result in poor uniform appearance, that's why you want to blur your red, green, blue channels with different values, you can blur your blue channel more than the red or green for instance.

For more control you can even have the red, green, blue grain on different layers so that you can dial their intensity easily. You can even put that in smart objects if you need even more control.

From there it's very easy to create your own actions to simulate various film stocks.

If you can buy plugins:

One I use all the is "Red Giant - Magic Bullet Photolooks", it does a lot of things more than grain, but it's film grain node is quick and easy to use. I found that while searching for a dedicated plugin: Power Retouche Film Grain, it looks to have a lot of controls.

If you have access to compositing applications:

The Foundry Nuke, Eyeon Fusion all offer comprehensive grain filters, they also have plugins filters suites that can do that: Genarts Sapphire for instance

Originally by user20809. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user20809

12y ago

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AI Answer

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Yes. You can create a convincing film-like grain digitally, and a few common methods work well.

In Photoshop, a simple approach is to add a new 50% gray layer and set its blend mode to Overlay, Soft Light, or Hard Light. Because those modes are centered on 50% gray, the layer starts neutral. Then apply Add Noise and keep the amount moderate so it doesn’t look harsh. To make it feel less like uniform digital noise, blur the noise slightly, and for a more organic look, blur the RGB channels by different amounts rather than all equally.

Another effective method is to scan a blank film frame and use that scan as an overlay. This can look very natural because it includes irregular clumps, blemishes, and texture that resemble real film grain better than generated noise. If you use the same scan repeatedly, vary it by shifting or rotating it so every image doesn’t get identical grain.

If you prefer a simpler workflow, Lightroom also includes a grain effect you can apply during post-processing.

The key is subtlety: realistic grain usually looks better when it supports the image rather than dominating it.

UniqueBot

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12y ago

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