Working with added or matched grain

The Add Grain effect creates new grain or noise in an image by building the grain from nothing or by basing the properties of the grain on presets. The Match Grain effect also creates new grain in an image but by matching the grain in a different image. Both effects share several controls in the Effect Controls panel that let you control the color, tonal range, blending mode, and animation properties of the grain.

Adjusting the tones of added or matched grain

The precise grain pattern present in any frame of film isn’t uniform throughout the frame but may depend on the tonal values of the content at each pixel. For example, in chemical film grain, the sizes of the silver halide crystals vary with the exposure level.

The Add Grain and Match Grain effects let you reproduce these subtle changes in grain patterns across areas of an image or a sequence by using the Shadows, Midtones, Highlights, and Midpoint controls in the Application controls group. These controls let you define how much grain is added to each tonal area and also to each channel in the image. For example, you can add more grain to overexposed areas of the blue channel to give an image of sky a grainier look.

You can use the Application controls group for the Add Grain or Match Grain effect to do the following:

To define how much grain is added to each tonal area in an image, adjust the Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights values.
To define the midpoint of the tonal range of the image for grain application purposes, adjust the Midpoint slider. By default, this slider is centered at 0.5, which represents the middle of the range of pixel values—127 for 8-bpc images and 16384 for 16-bpc images.
For even finer control, use the Channel Balance controls to adjust the grain in the shadow, midtone, and highlight areas independently for each channel.

Animating added or matched grain

By default, the grain or noise generated by the Add Grain and Match Grain effects moves at the same speed as the source material to accurately simulate realistic noise. Slowing down the noise processes may be useful for aesthetic effect or to keep the added noise from buzzing and drawing attention to itself. These effects have an internal randomizer that changes the positions of the noise pixels between frames. But you can also change the appearance of the noise between layers on the same frame while keeping every other parameter constant.

You can use the Animation controls group for the Add Grain or Match Grain effect to do the following:

To specify the frame rate of the added grain, as a multiple of the destination frame rate, adjust the Animation Speed value in the Animation controls group in the Effect Controls panel. At higher Animation Speed values, the lifespan of the grains is lower. At the default value of 1, the grain moves at the same rate as the frames. At lower values, the grain changes more slowly, which can be useful for giving the appearance of film grain. At zero, the grain is stationary over time.
To use interpolation to create smooth transitions between the generated noise frames, select Animate Smoothly. This control matters only if Animation Speed is less than 1.
To change the appearance of the noise between layers on the same frame, adjust the Random Seed value. Each Random Seed value represents one of 100 possible variations in the appearance; changing the value doesn’t make the results more or less random.

Blending and adjusting the color of added or matched grain

You can adjust the color, saturation, and blending behavior of the grain generated by the Add Grain or Match Grain effect.

Several factors can affect the apparent color of the grain that these effects generate, including the following:

The color value of the underlying pixel in the source image.
The Saturation value of the noise.
The Tint Color and Tint Amount values, if you have modified these settings from the defaults.
The Blending Mode value in the Application controls group.
The amount of noise applied, if any, to each channel individually using the Channel Intensities controls group.

Using the Color controls group in the Effect Controls panel, you can adjust any of the following:

Monochromatic: Gives the added noise a single tint. By default, the tones are black and white, but you can change the Tint Color to make it a gradient of any color. (The Saturation and Channel Intensities controls aren’t available if Monochromatic is selected.)
Tint Amount: Controls the depth and intensity of the color shift.
Tint Color: Controls the color the added noise shifts toward.
Saturation: Controls the amount and vividness of the color.

The Blending Mode in the Application controls determines how the color value of the generated noise combines with the color value of the underlying source layer at each pixel:

Film: Makes the generated grain appear embedded in the image. This mode affects darker colors more than lighter ones, just as the grain in a film negative appears.
Multiply: Multiplies the color values of the noise and the source. However, the result may be either lighter or darker than the original, because the noise may have either a positive or negative value.
Add: Combines the color values of the pixel in the source with the noise. However, the result isn’t always lighter than the original because the noise created by grain effects can have either a positive or negative value.
Screen: Multiplies the inverse brightness values of the noise and the source. The effect is like printing from a multiple exposure on a negative. The result is always brighter than the original.
Overlay: Combines the behavior of Film and Multiply: Both shadows and highlights get less grain, while midtones get a full application of grain.