How's it going everyone, this is Chris from Spoon Graphics back with another video tutorial.
Today I'm going to show you 5 ways to add lovey grain textures to your photographs and
artwork in Adobe Photoshop.
In the digital age of photography the noise from high ISO sensitivity is an undesirable
addition to the image.
ISO ruins the picture by taking away the details with ugly pixel sized blotches of RGB colours.
In contrast, the sensitivity of film adds a kind of texture to the image as film grain,
which has become a nostalgic aesthetic of analogue photography.
There are a few ways you can mimic the appearance of film grain in Adobe Photoshop, which can
help give your photos and artwork more of an aged and tactile appearance.
Some of the methods I'll be showing offer similar results, but the process is slightly
different, so it's handy to check them all out and see which one you find most memorable.
Most people's go-to filter to add noise or grain to an image is the basic Filter > Noise
> Add Noise effect.
If you check the Monochromatic option it takes away the ugly ISO like dots, but it doesn't
look very convincing, it's basically just a scattering of perfectly formed pixels, so
let's take a look at some other options.
The Noise filter doesn't actually look too bad when you combine it with some additional
steps to help fix some of the problems of using that filter alone.
One of those problems is that it's applied destructively to the image, meaning you can't
then go back and alter or remove the effect.
Add a new layer above the image and go to Edit > Fill.
Choose 50% Gray from the dropdown, then change this layer's blending mode to Overlay.
Right click on the layer and choose Convert To Smart Object.
This will allow you to go back and tweak the filter settings.
Add the Filter > Noise > Add Noise effect and choose a suitable figure depending how
subtle you want your grain effect to be.
The result it exactly the same as before, but one additional step to make it a little
more realistic is to add a tiny amount of Gaussian Blur to take that hard edge off the
grain pixels.
Something between 0.5 to 1px works great.
The great thing about this method compared to the original is you can go back and edit
those values to fine tune the effect.
We all know about the Noise filter in Adobe Photoshop, but did you know there's actually
a Film Grain effect built right in too?
Convert your image to a Smart Object so it won't be destructively edited, then go to
Filter > Filter Gallery.
You can quickly find the Film Grain effect from the list.
This option has a few extra settings than the basic Noise Filter, but it still lacks
some realism.
One of my favourite methods of adding realistic film grain is via the Camera Raw Filter.
This toolset it great for processing your image in general, but there's a certain set
of effects that are reserved just for adding film grain.
Convert your image to a Smart Object then go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter.
You'll find the grain settings in particular under the FX tab.
Here you'll find some handy settings for the Grain Amount, Size and Roughness, which you
can fine tune to generate the perfect grain effect for images of all sizes, which is often
a problem when working on high resolution images where those previous pixel basic noise
effects can often get lost in the overall image size.
The unique texturing of the Camera Raw Filter grain effect is one of the closest replications
of authentic film grain.
Being applied to a Smart Object means you also have the option to fine tune or remove
the effect altogether.
Another filter which generates a more realistic grain effect is any of the Blur Gallery options.
In order to apply this you first need to add a 50% grey layer above your artwork, otherwise
the actual blur effect would affect your image.
Since the blurring is being applied to an empty grey layer it has no effect, but the
additional settings under the Noise tab will be visible against your original photograph.
Here you also have the Amount, Size and Roughness sliders to play with, which can also be balanced
against the Blur amount.
Then there's one more technique you can employ to add realistic film grain effects to your
images, and that's to overlay an actual film grain texture.
I'll link to this fantastic set of Free Film Grain Textures from Arkadzi Ulitski down in
the description area.
It contains a range of realistic grain effect textures, ranging from subtle noise to some
bright color burns.
The addition of dust and speckles really adds to the authenticity to give your images a
great nostalgic appearance.
Once you've downloaded the pack, choose one of the textures and open it in Photoshop.
Press CMD+A to Select All, followed by CMD+C to Copy and CMD+V to Paste it into your main
document.
Scale the texture to size if necessary with the CMD+T shortcut for Transform.
To allow the grain of the texture to be applied to your artwork, change the blending mode
to Screen from the darker textures, or Multiply for the lighter textures.
If the effect is too prominent, you can tone it down by simply adjusting the opacity slider
to choose between a subtle grain effect or a heavily distressed print.
So I hope this overview of techniques helps you out.
Let me know which one is your preferred method down in the comments, or share your own secret
recipe for creating lovely film grain effects.
If you enjoyed the video or learnt anything new a thumbs up would be appreciated, otherwise
thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.