[Help] Adding Grain - Suggestions?

[Nick_M]

I'm looking to add grain to some silents that have been excessively processed, to the point that any remaining grain is magnetic, frozen, or removed entirely.

What's everyone's favorite ways for adding grain? I use avisynth and Premiere, and want to start using Resolve soon.

[deleted user]

Different ways really. You can multiply grain against the footage and then pull up exposure again (all in linear color space). Or you could do a simple soft light if your grain is middled around a 50% grey.

If you have a reference grain (like from the original footage), then you could use flat areas from that to create similar fake grain via 3D FFT transform plugins in Photoshop. Assemble flat parts of the image to a whole image. Run High Pass (or do that first). Then transform to the frequency/phase domain via 3D FFT. Replace the right side (the phase stuff) with random noise. Transform back. Voilla, noise that has all the original frequency/granularity etc, but is random in terms of position etc.

[Valeyard]

I have a bunch of real grain scans if you want 'em.

[Nick_M]

Following up, After Effects works pretty well at matching grain to surrounding shots.

[Bilbofett]

I have a bunch of real grain scans if you want 'em.

same here, wanna exchange in DM?