Film Grain Simulation

bastibe · Apr 19, 2022

In some recent discussion about grain vs noise, I realized that black and white film is indeed made of grain. It's not an "added" noise, but the entire image is made of these little black dots. There are no grays, just more or less dense/large black dots.

I wonder, is there software that can translate a digital, noisy black-and-white image to a simulated grainy image? It would probably have to increase resolution massively to do so.

Overrank · Apr 19, 2022

bastibe said:
In some recent discussion about grain vs noise, I realized that black and white film is indeed made of grain. It's not an "added" noise, but the entire image is made of these little black dots. There are no grays, just more or less dense/large black dots.

The image in black and white film is made up of silver crystals. The actual size of these crystals in black and white film is around 1 micron ( see for example Colour Granularity and Graininess, D Zwick, The Journal of Photographic Science, 11 (5), 1953 - of course that’s prior to T-Grain).

The grain that you can see in black and white photographs are not the actual crystals themselves, they’re too small, instead it’s the three dimensional optical / mental clumping of these silver particles (Zwick again) not the particles themselves.

bastibe said:
I wonder, is there software that can translate a digital, noisy black-and-white image to a simulated grainy image? It would probably have to increase resolution massively to do so.

How grain looks depends on how you observe it - film scanner looks different to optical printing looks different to drum scanner, so even to make a digital version you would need to define a digital version of what observation you were going to make.

For practical purposes you can simulate grain digitally, but to actually model the underlying silver crystals you would need a digital sensor with a much greater resolution than is currently available (AFAIK full frame digital SLRs have “pixels” around 4-6 microns).

turke · Apr 20, 2022

bastibe said:
In some recent discussion about grain vs noise, I realized that black and white film is indeed made of grain. It's not an "added" noise, but the entire image is made of these little black dots. There are no grays, just more or less dense/large black dots.

I wonder, is there software that can translate a digital, noisy black-and-white image to a simulated grainy image? It would probably have to increase resolution massively to do so.

Lightroom has simulation grain slider, I don't know how good it is.

Howard V · Apr 20, 2022

This is Fujifilm's weak/small grain option that I added as a custom feature in the Acros B&W film simulation. I like the way it mimics actual film grain which increases in dark areas and decreases in brighter ones. (There's recently been another thread on your topic, in the Fujifilm X forum here.)

--
https://www.flickr.com/people/vrankin/

NickZ2016 · Apr 20, 2022

There is a lot of effort put into making digital video look filmic. It's not just grain that they try and simulate. The old dreaded halation can be added.

Basically everything people spent a century trying to remove is now being added digitally.

Mark S Abeln · Apr 20, 2022

bastibe said:
In some recent discussion about grain vs noise, I realized that black and white film is indeed made of grain. It's not an "added" noise, but the entire image is made of these little black dots. There are no grays, just more or less dense/large black dots.

I wonder, is there software that can translate a digital, noisy black-and-white image to a simulated grainy image? It would probably have to increase resolution massively to do so.

Digital photography is a different medium than film photography, and so I have the tendency to believe that the slavish copying of film is misguided, or worse. Sure, going after an aesthetic is OK, but if you really, really want a film look, shouldn't you use film instead?

I think that the mere suggestion of film grain can help with a nostalgic look, but going for a full film grain emulation is both difficult—for other reasons than what you mention—as well as probably unnecessary.

Color film does not have grain, but rather dye clouds, which has other problems.

absquatulate · Apr 21, 2022

NickZ2016 said:
There is a lot of effort put into making digital video look filmic. It's not just grain that they try and simulate. The old dreaded halation can be added.

Basically everything people spent a century trying to remove is now being added digitally.

Personally I'd rather have grain than the water colour effect many noise reduction algorithm's produce. Grain has its own aesthetic quality, and adds texture to an image, as well as retaining sharpness and some detail, rather than horrible smearing. In my experience, for black and white, Silver Efex is still the best at producing the most pleasing looking grain in digital. Halation in colour is a rather classic look, and it's popular in the film community, the price of Cinestill 800T will testify to that. If you want that hyper-realistic CGI look, which I personally dislike intensely, then digital has you covered.

BarelyAmateur · Apr 25, 2022

Accuracy is often one of the things young artists learn first. How to draw, paint, color, or sculpt accurately. After you've learned accuracy you can learn when it's not needed.

tbcass · May 1, 2022

Overrank said:
The image in black and white film is made up of silver crystals. The actual size of these crystals in black and white film is around 1 micron ( see for example Colour Granularity and Graininess, D Zwick, The Journal of Photographic Science, 11 (5), 1953 - of course that’s prior to T-Grain).

The grain that you can see in black and white photographs are not the actual crystals themselves, they’re too small, instead it’s the three dimensional optical / mental clumping of these silver particles (Zwick again) not the particles themselves.

Overrank said:
How grain looks depends on how you observe it - film scanner looks different to optical printing looks different to drum scanner, so even to make a digital version you would need to define a digital version of what observation you were going to make.

For practical purposes you can simulate grain digitally, but to actually model the underlying silver crystals you would need a digital sensor with a much greater resolution than is currently available (AFAIK full frame digital SLRs have “pixels” around 4-6 microns).

Since film grain is the result of clumping together 1-micron crystals maybe 4-6 microns would be small enough.

Ainisru · May 1, 2022

Mark S Abeln said:
bastibe said:

In some recent discussion about grain vs noise, I realized that black and white film is indeed made of grain. It's not an "added" noise, but the entire image is made of these little black dots. There are no grays, just more or less dense/large black dots.

I wonder, is there software that can translate a digital, noisy black-and-white image to a simulated grainy image? It would probably have to increase resolution massively to do so.

Click to expand...

Digital photography is a different medium than film photography, and so I have the tendency to believe that the slavish copying of film is misguided, or worse. Sure, going after an aesthetic is OK, but if you really, really want a film look, shouldn't you use film instead?

I think that the mere suggestion of film grain can help with a nostalgic look, but going for a full film grain emulation is both difficult—for other reasons than what you mention—as well as probably unnecessary.

Color film does not have grain, but rather dye clouds, which has other problems.

The entire process is less convenient for many reasons.

For example last year, I was taking a trip to Nanaimo, BC and I literally could not find Kodak Gold 200 or similar colour film. My local stores (the very few that even stock them) did not know a date when they would be in stock.

My local camera specific store only had B&W and Lomo Purple left (in hindsight, I should have tried this funky film out for fun). I did have 100 T-MAX, but I felt like it wasn't a appropriate choice for trying to photography lovely sea and landscapes.

This doesn't even get into the costs of having a lab to process my film, do prints, and or scan them on a USB stick. My friends don't apply to everyone's reason of shooting film, but from my friend group, all shoot because of the look.

Overrank · May 1, 2022

tbcass said:
Overrank said:

The image in black and white film is made up of silver crystals. The actual size of these crystals in black and white film is around 1 micron ( see for example Colour Granularity and Graininess, D Zwick, The Journal of Photographic Science, 11 (5), 1953 - of course that’s prior to T-Grain).

The grain that you can see in black and white photographs are not the actual crystals themselves, they’re too small, instead it’s the three dimensional optical / mental clumping of these silver particles (Zwick again) not the particles themselves.

How grain looks depends on how you observe it - film scanner looks different to optical printing looks different to drum scanner, so even to make a digital version you would need to define a digital version of what observation you were going to make.

For practical purposes you can simulate grain digitally, but to actually model the underlying silver crystals you would need a digital sensor with a much greater resolution than is currently available (AFAIK full frame digital SLRs have “pixels” around 4-6 microns).

Click to expand...

Since film grain is the result of clumping together 1-micron crystals maybe 4-6 microns would be small enough.

They don’t migrate together to make bigger crystals, they appear to be optically clumped because you’re looking at a 3D structure in 2D - hence why different printing or scanning techniques can enhance or minimise the grain (obviously this based on Zwick so predates T-grain). You can simulate it to any degree you want, but that was not what the OP was asking. Why you wouldn’t want to just do a simulation “for the look” I don’t know - at normal viewing sizes and modes (basically phone and tablet screens, and computer monitors) it wouldn’t matter.

Overrank · May 1, 2022

Ainisru said:
Mark S Abeln said:

bastibe said:

In some recent discussion about grain vs noise, I realized that black and white film is indeed made of grain. It's not an "added" noise, but the entire image is made of these little black dots. There are no grays, just more or less dense/large black dots.

I wonder, is there software that can translate a digital, noisy black-and-white image to a simulated grainy image? It would probably have to increase resolution massively to do so.

Click to expand...

Digital photography is a different medium than film photography, and so I have the tendency to believe that the slavish copying of film is misguided, or worse. Sure, going after an aesthetic is OK, but if you really, really want a film look, shouldn't you use film instead?

I think that the mere suggestion of film grain can help with a nostalgic look, but going for a full film grain emulation is both difficult—for other reasons than what you mention—as well as probably unnecessary.

Color film does not have grain, but rather dye clouds, which has other problems.

Click to expand...

The entire process is less convenient for many reasons.

For example last year, I was taking a trip to Nanaimo, BC and I literally could not find Kodak Gold 200 or similar colour film. My local stores (the very few that even stock them) did not know a date when they would be in stock.

As you probably know there’s a worldwide shortage of colour film, in part caused by issues from Covid distribution lines, and in part caused by demand. In the UK at least it’s still very difficult to get any low cost colour film,

Ainisru said:
My local camera specific store only had B&W and Lomo Purple left (in hindsight, I should have tried this funky film out for fun). I did have 100 T-MAX, but I felt like it wasn't a appropriate choice for trying to photography lovely sea and landscapes.

This doesn't even get into the costs of having a lab to process my film, do prints, and or scan them on a USB stick. My friends don't apply to everyone's reason of shooting film, but from my friend group, all shoot because of the look.

tbcass · May 2, 2022

Overrank said:
Why you wouldn’t want to just do a simulation “for the look” I don’t know - at normal viewing sizes and modes (basically phone and tablet screens, and computer monitors) it wouldn’t matter.

Assuming you meant would rather than wouldn't, grain simulation with digital doesn't make sense to me. For decades film manufacturers did everything they could to minimize film grain and now people want to add it when it isn't there. Just like the "resurgence" of vinyl records which are inferior to CDs, it makes no sense to me.

absquatulate · May 2, 2022

tbcass said:
Overrank said:

Why you wouldn’t want to just do a simulation “for the look” I don’t know - at normal viewing sizes and modes (basically phone and tablet screens, and computer monitors) it wouldn’t matter.

Click to expand...

Assuming you meant would rather than wouldn't, grain simulation with digital doesn't make sense to me. For decades film manufacturers did everything they could to minimize film grain and now people want to add it when it isn't there. Just like the "resurgence" of vinyl records which are inferior to CDs, it makes no sense to me.

Overrank · May 2, 2022

tbcass said:
Overrank said:

Why you wouldn’t want to just do a simulation “for the look” I don’t know - at normal viewing sizes and modes (basically phone and tablet screens, and computer monitors) it wouldn’t matter.

Click to expand...

Assuming you meant would rather than wouldn't, grain simulation with digital doesn't make sense to me. For decades film manufacturers did everything they could to minimize film grain and now people want to add it when it isn't there. Just like the "resurgence" of vinyl records which are inferior to CDs, it makes no sense to me.

I did mean “wouldn’t” but it might be a bit colloquial English. I meant I don’t understand why you would want to spend a massive amount of time and energy understanding the physical nature of grain so that you could incorporate that into a model to produce an accurate digital image with grain added, when you could just use a simulation as people do now anyway.

As to whether people should add grain I think that’s a matter for personal preference. Some films I shoot with (e.g. Kodak P3200) have *very* heavy grain, but they’re also fast, which is why I use them. My favourite B+W film, XP2, has little grain.

Aberaeron · May 2, 2022

bastibe said:
In some recent discussion about grain vs noise, I realized that black and white film is indeed made of grain. It's not an "added" noise, but the entire image is made of these little black dots. There are no grays, just more or less dense/large black dots.

I wonder, is there software that can translate a digital, noisy black-and-white image to a simulated grainy image? It would probably have to increase resolution massively to do so.

I don’t use it myself but DXO FimPack 6 has dozens of film emulations available in both black and white and colour. I used an earlier free version for a while but its use has since expired. It is great for giving a project an uniform filmic look. The emulations are of specific branded film stock and each is somewhat adjustable.

Fairly confident that it would do as you wish and much more. There’s a free trial but the £125 asking price for the full product is a bit hot for me. Give it a go as that will cost nothing and you may like it. Or not.

robgendreau · May 2, 2022

I fully expect that in the future, when we can have digital shots without visible noise artifacts, that there will be a thread here on how to add color and luminance noise. Retro is always a thing.

Sheesh, pixellation can be added, and you'll see it in all kinds of work.

Not to mention anamorphic lenses and flares, pinhole cameras,"character" in old lenses, sepia, instant film, and on and on.

And it's not just nostalgia; people will use most anything in a search for interesting images. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but the most technically perfect thing isn't always the best either.

So perhaps embrace the noise and don't delete some of those shots...maybe your kids will find them interesting in 30 years.

tbcass · May 2, 2022

absquatulate said:
tbcass said:

Overrank said:

Why you wouldn’t want to just do a simulation “for the look” I don’t know - at normal viewing sizes and modes (basically phone and tablet screens, and computer monitors) it wouldn’t matter.

Click to expand...

Assuming you meant would rather than wouldn't, grain simulation with digital doesn't make sense to me. For decades film manufacturers did everything they could to minimize film grain and now people want to add it when it isn't there. Just like the "resurgence" of vinyl records which are inferior to CDs, it makes no sense to me.

Click to expand...

That isn't actually true, film grain has always been part of the aesthetic in film, particularly black and white. For certain types of photography less grain is desirable, but for others it's part of the look. If it wasn't traditional grain films would have been completely replaced by T grain films long ago. The two most popular black and white films currently, by some distance, are Tri-x and HP5+.

I believe that was because photographers had no choice but to tolerate the grain so they made the best of it by incorporating it into their photos.

Member said:
Vinyl is a much more analogue sound, apart from the physically more attractive properties ( Album art etc ), it has its own aesthetic that people enjoy, there's a ritualistic element to dusting off a record, carefully placing the needle and settling down to listen to a good album, the crackle and hiss is part of the experience.

While I agree about the tactile aspects of vinyl along with the album art I personally always hated the hiss, pops, and crackles of vinyl with an absolute passion. I used exclusively vinyl on high-end audiophile equipment for 20 years before I bought my first CD player so I am quite familiar with the positives and negatives of each format. I was also big into high-end cassette recorders. When I bought a new record I would record it and then never play the record again because it deteriorated a little with every play.

Member said:
Vinyl is also a lot more resilient, retrieving a CD from a small cracked case, chucking it into a drive only to hear it skipping on your favourite track isn't quite the same experience for me.

That I disagree with. I had a lot more problems with vinyl records repeating or skipping a damaged groove than I ever did with CDs. Most of the problems with CDs came from using cheap CD players. I rarely had a CD skip and when I did it was on a faulty new CD which I simply returned for another.

absquatulate · May 2, 2022

tbcass said:
absquatulate said:

tbcass said:

Overrank said:

Why you wouldn’t want to just do a simulation “for the look” I don’t know - at normal viewing sizes and modes (basically phone and tablet screens, and computer monitors) it wouldn’t matter.

Click to expand...

Assuming you meant would rather than wouldn't, grain simulation with digital doesn't make sense to me. For decades film manufacturers did everything they could to minimize film grain and now people want to add it when it isn't there. Just like the "resurgence" of vinyl records which are inferior to CDs, it makes no sense to me.

Click to expand...

That isn't actually true, film grain has always been part of the aesthetic in film, particularly black and white. For certain types of photography less grain is desirable, but for others it's part of the look. If it wasn't traditional grain films would have been completely replaced by T grain films long ago. The two most popular black and white films currently, by some distance, are Tri-x and HP5+.

Click to expand...

I believe that was because photographers had no choice but to tolerate the grain so they made the best of it by incorporating it into their photos.

Well I'm sure that did happen for some, but they don't have to do that now, and the best sellers are Tri-X and HP5, as opposed to Tmax and Delta.

tbcass said:
tbcass said:

Vinyl is a much more analogue sound, apart from the physically more attractive properties ( Album art etc ), it has its own aesthetic that people enjoy, there's a ritualistic element to dusting off a record, carefully placing the needle and settling down to listen to a good album, the crackle and hiss is part of the experience.

Click to expand...

While I agree about the tactile aspects of vinyl along with the album art I personally always hated the hiss, pops, and crackles of vinyl with an absolute passion. I used exclusively vinyl on high-end audiophile equipment for 20 years before I bought my first CD player so I am quite familiar with the positives and negatives of each format. I was also big into high-end cassette recorders. When I bought a new record I would record it and then never play the record again because it deteriorated a little with every play.

tbcass said:

Vinyl is also a lot more resilient, retrieving a CD from a small cracked case, chucking it into a drive only to hear it skipping on your favourite track isn't quite the same experience for me.

Click to expand...

That I disagree with. I had a lot more problems with vinyl records repeating or skipping a damaged groove than I ever did with CDs. Most of the problems with CDs came from using cheap CD players. I rarely had a CD skip and when I did it was on a faulty new CD which I simply returned for another.

My experience has been the opposite, I have albums that have been transported all over the place, not kept in the best conditions, some are even warped, yet they still play fine. I've had far more CD's that skip, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

I think there's clear daylight between us on how we perceive things, you seem to be something of a perfectionist, I'm someone who can see the beauty in imperfection. Neither viewpoint is necessarily superior to the other, they're just different ways of seeing things.

Overrank · May 2, 2022

robgendreau said:
I fully expect that in the future, when we can have digital shots without visible noise artifacts, that there will be a thread here on how to add color and luminance noise. Retro is always a thing.

Although I shoot film almost exclusively, I would never think to add simulated grain to a digital photo. I don’t really understand why people wouldn’t just shoot film if that’s the aesthetic they want,

robgendreau said:
Sheesh, pixellation can be added, and you'll see it in all kinds of work.

Not to mention anamorphic lenses and flares, pinhole cameras,"character" in old lenses, sepia, instant film, and on and on.

And it's not just nostalgia; people will use most anything in a search for interesting images. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but the most technically perfect thing isn't always the best either.

So perhaps embrace the noise and don't delete some of those shots...maybe your kids will find them interesting in 30 years.

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