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P: Better (actual) color grain

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
December 1, 2022
7 replies
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So, good color grain simulation is pretty hard to find, and a while back I came up with my own as a PS action, which is pretty good.

(Optional) To give a better "pushed grainy color reversal film" look, increase saturation (even till unrealistic ... go look at E1600 +2/+3) and smooth image (texture -50 or thereabouts)
Desaturate photo "-50" to avoid gamut problems
Convert to CMYK
For each channel:
a) Camera Raw Filter: Grain Amount 100, Grain Size whatever (e.g. 30), Grain Roughness 100
b) gaussian blur (to match grain size above)
Convert back to RGB
Turn saturation back up "+50"

Et, voila!

Now, obviously there is no reason this can't be done in Lightroom itself, as basically all of this is built in (no explicit gaussian blur but it's used everywhere internally).

Here's an example up close and magnified. This is a nice clean digital photo run through the above action:

For comparison, here is a scan of +2 pushed cross-processed expired E100-something:

If looking for knobs to tweak, you could play somewhat with the "dye" colors (variations from pure CMY(K)), adjust size/roughness of the grain, blend with the original, etc. etc. Messing with the dye colors involves complicated color math that I don't want to get near in Photoshop scripting, but someone working on a pro software product would have no problem coming up with the appropriate profiles.

I'm sure there are plugins and whatnot out there that do a real color grain simulation, but:

PS and LR don't
Despite its excellent B/W grain simulation, Nik doesn't
In the world of video/cinema (which I don't know much about), DaVinci Resolve doesn't

Please, Adobe, make it so!

See also this brief post:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-polychromatic-film-grain-and-halation/idi-p/12433537

D

DanMed

Participant

I’ve spent years looking for a convincing film grain workflow within Lightroom Classic. Dehancer produces results I sometimes prefer, but it adds extra steps and requires working on a rendered TIFF or JPEG rather than keeping the adjustments within my raw workflow.

I now do almost everything in Lightroom Classic, including work that previously required Photoshop. Grain remains one of the few finishing steps where I feel the available controls fall short.

What I particularly like about Lightroom’s grain is how it softens fine detail while retaining the overall definition of the image. Other tools can give me more convincing coloured grain, but getting that same balance of sharpness and softness is difficult.

I’d love an updated grain module with adjustable colour grain, independent control over the softness of the underlying image, and control over how grain behaves across shadows, midtones and highlights. Ideally, these would extend the existing controls while preserving the current rendering for older edits.

Grain is an important part of my final grade, and being able to achieve this within Lightroom’s non-destructive raw workflow would remove the need for external plugins and additional rendered files.

R

richardplondon

Community Expert

Just to explain, in case anyone is unaware: LrC grain (as with various other effects and adjustments) can be set to auto-vary across image tonality - using Range mask > Luminance / or any other kind of selectivity. So that is not something you set in the global Effects panel. A Mask can override global grain settings by applying the local Grain sliders. This way grain can be concentrated for shadow tones only, say, rolling that override off to zero for the highlight tones.

And optionally this tone-related grain Mask setup can be suitably named, and then can be included by name into a develop preset - for use on other images too.

D

DanMed

Participant

Hey Richard, thanks for the very swift reply. I was aware of the luminance mask approach, but I’d find dedicated tonal controls within the grain panel much more intuitive.

The main issue I’m trying to solve is the lack of polychromatic grain. Masking helps control where grain appears, but I’d also like colour variation within the grain itself. For my colour photography work, Lightroom’s monochromatic grain feels separate from the image rather than part of its texture.

I’d love an adjustable colour component alongside the existing grain controls, so I could achieve that look without leaving the raw workflow.

J

joelnorman

Participating Frequently

Yes. It really bothers me that there’s no polychromatic grain option in Lightroom. Grain is something I add to almost every image to some degree, but I have to bring it into photoshop if I want to get a genuinely filmic feel on it.

H

Hard CoderAuthor

Known Participant

I'll only pimp my own thread start once, but I'm kind of shocked that no one has chimed in here.

After a little more poking about, it seems that cinema "color" grain simulations mostly (or completely) use color noise sort of slathered on relatively realistic b/w grain simulation. Which is entirely, completely unlike actual color grain. There's probably a sophisticated (and perhaps somewhat annoyingly slow) color grain simulation out there but I still haven't seen it, just a bunch of folks explaining how to make your b/w grain pattern look its best in color. 😱

Real world color film grain is essentially a somewhat randomly patterned halftone. The C/M/Y-ish colors are dyes in the film that, obviously, aren't 100% precisely C/M/Y, nor do they respond to colored light in a mathematically ideal way.

Real color film grain, when prominent, looks really distinctive and amazing. It's hard to even find, for example, color night photographs of football games from the 70s-90s (although they were ubiquitous), but they are grainy as firetruck. And great fun to look at. 4MP digital was just fine as a replacement.

It's a lost thing that shouldn't be lost, at least not the look of it. And meanwhile that expired 20-yr old original recipe E100-whatever will be out there for a long time and also grainy as firetruck when pushed.

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