Content-Aware Grain

redisred wrote:

I've spent a good amount of time playing around with this in PS and it's certainly possible to do, at least to my own satisfaction. Here's my process:

1. Create a 50% solid gray layer on top of your image

2. Filter > Add Noise > Check Monochromatic and Guassian, amount is up to you. (try 10-15%)

3. I like to add some blur to the noise to soften it. Filter > Blur > Guassian Blur > (something around 0.5-1.0)

4. Set this layer to "Linear Light" (yes, it looks bad, hang on)

5. Double-click the layer outside of the text area to bring up the Layer Style menu

6. At the bottom in the "blend if" section, find the white triangle on the right of the "underlying layer" gradient tool. Option-click and drag it to pull just the left half of the triangle down. This will smoothly decrease the strength of the grain on the highlights. How far down to take it is up to you. Somewhere between 1/2 and 1/4 down is where I like it.

7. Finally, set the opacity of this grain layer to taste.

Once you find the settings you like, make an action of this and even run it as a batch on your images.

I assume you are using Photoshop.  Is this correct?

I am using Photoshop Elements 2020 and I am not finding layer blend functionality:

I see that I can make a noise layer and then merge it, but I think without the blend capability I cannot make the noise look like film grain.

Any ideas here?