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Thursday, June 4, 2009

But... but... why would you want grain?

6:43 PM / Technology / 2 Comments

I haven't used my camera in what seems like years, and in point of fact I'm really not much of a photographer. I am, however, rather interested in techniques for making digital photographs seem a bit less, well, digital. Some will, I'm sure, question the point of shooting with digital equipment when your desired end result is something that resembles film, but the costs and logistics of shooting on film are, as far as I can gather, pretty counter-productive, particularly for casual users. Let's face it, grain is aesthetically pleasing, and for all the advancements made in the field of consumer digital cameras in recent years, the images they produce still tend to look dead and lifeless.

Today, I happened to come across Grain Surgery, a free filter for Photoshop, which contains numerous presets which accurately mimic a variety of real film stocks, both colour and black & white. You can also create your own grain "pattern", sample and match existing grain, and even, should the need arise, reduce grain.

To the right is a photograph I took of the Wolfson Medical School Building at Glasgow University a few winters back, with a bunch of colour and contrast tweaks added, plus a layer of Kodak Plus-X Pan grain. (This is actually a black & white stock, but it was the one that most closely matched the aesthetic I was going for.) You can see it before and grain or colour tweaks were applied here.

Obviously, not everyone is going to want to go for something quite so stylised in terms of colour, or quite such pronounced grain. However, if you're a frustrated digital photographer who wants to get an image that looks something like film without the cost and hassle of actually shooting on film, give Grain Surgery a shot and see what you can come up with.

2 Comments

 
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