Grain Surgery for Photoshop-Review

“the noise is removed, yet the details remain”

ain Surgery has redefined the level of our image quality by allowing us to print enlargements from 35mm that have the clean, noise free look of medium and large format.

Even images prepared for the web benefit, as Grain Surgery is equally adept at removing jpeg compression artifacts.

Grain Surgery is a set of three filters: Remove Grain, Match Grain, and Add Grain. These filters have the ability to manipulate film grain or noise in images while preserving the details.

Remove Grain

The saying “garbage in garbage out” definitely applies to digital photography. The noise or grain in an image will only be increased as an image is manipulated in Photoshop. The ideal situation is to minimize the noise at the start. Remove Grain does exactly that.

The Grain Surgery Remove Grain plug-in reduces film grain and artifacts from digital images. The results are remarkable as can be seen in the example. Notice the noise is removed, yet the details remain. I know of no other plug-in or Photoshop technique that can match the Grain Surgery results.

One of the primary reasons we chose Photoshop for our image editing is that an image can have multiple layers and each layer can have a layer mask. The layer mask allows adjustments made to the image to apply only to specific areas of the layer. We typically apply Remove Grain on two different layers, one layer with an aggressive amount of noise reduction and the other with a subtle amount. On the layer with the aggressive noise reduction the effect is limited to the sky and water if present. The subtle noise reduction is applied to the areas with fine details. Painting on the layer mask with a soft edged reduced opacity brush defines the areas. This technique is fast and easy and used in conjunction with Grain Surgery’s Remove Grain is very effective.

Match grain

The Grain Surgery Match Grain filter comes in handy when compositing images. It analyses grain from one image and duplicates it in another. For example we can create a sky in Photoshop and insert it in an image. The created sky will look fake with a pasted in look because the digital sky is artificially smooth. Match Grain will analyze the grain in the image and duplicate the look in the inserted sky. The texture of the sky will match the texture of the image, completing the illusion.

Conclusion

So how good is it? Good enough that Grain Surgery is an integral part of our digital workflow. Need we say anymore?

Version 1 of Grain Surgery was very good. Version 2 is even better. A demo is available. Highly recommended.

Enjoy,

Mike and Tammy Rice

Add Grain

Add grain you may be thinking; why would I want to add grain to an image? Well I have to tell you this can be quite a useful trick. The combination of Remove Grain and Add Grain can make an image from a digital camera look like film. Images from digital cameras have noise. Talk to any one who shoots digital and they will tell you digital noise looks bad, unlike film grain which has an organic fine art look. The trick. First, use Remove Grain to remove the noise, and then second, apply Add Grain to give the image the film like look. On a digital SLR image the illusion is quite convincing.

“The combination of Remove Grain and Add Grain can make an image from a digital camera look like film.”