What does shot noise look like in color photos?

In most digital cameras, shot noise is fundamentally the same in color and monochrome: it comes from the random arrival of photons at the sensor.

The key point is that most CCD and CMOS sensors are not inherently color-sensitive. They record light intensity only, and color is produced by a color filter array placed over the pixels, typically red, green, and blue. That means the shot noise occurs in the underlying light measurement, then each pixel’s noise is simply associated with its filter color.

So in a color image, shot noise usually appears as fine random variation in the red, green, and blue pixel values rather than a completely different kind of noise pattern. In other words, it looks like the same grain-like randomness, but distributed through the color channels.

Exceptions exist, such as Foveon sensors or a few uncommon filter layouts, but for standard Bayer-type cameras the practical answer is: shot noise looks essentially the same, just tinted by the color filters.