Grainy days

I was playing inside Lightroom and noticed that there is an option to add grain to an image. Why would you do this? Holly Moonie

This is a really interesting question, Holly – and I’ll confess that the Add Grain option in Lightroom is something that

I  have largely ignored. For anyone who hasn’t noticed it before, it is found in the Effects panel when you are in the Develop module, sandwiched between the more often used Post-Crop Vignette and the Dehaze sliders. As the name suggests, you can use Add Grain to add various degrees of grain with different size and roughness to an image.

To my mind, it’s purely a creative aesthetic that harks back to the days of film, when ‘grain’ in a higher ISO film was often regarded as part of its appeal. Something gritty and grainy might, for example, add some atmosphere to certain subjects. I remember choosing black-andwhite film like Ilford Delta 3200 or Kodak T-Max 3200 for exactly that reason.

Perhaps we’ve unconsciously moved away from this in recent times, as it seems trendier to eradicate any level of grain or noise from our digital images as we try to polish every pixel. But maybe we’re missing out, Holly? Maybe a bit of added grain here and there can give a set of images a creative grungey look that would really work well.

I had a play around and came up with the example image. I tried both colour and mono versions, but in the end decided the added grain treatment suits mono better. It’s all a matter of taste, so I wouldn’t rule out doing it to a colour image too.

The photo above, originally shot at ISO 100, has been processed with a Grain Amount of 50, Size of 47 and Roughness of 63 to give it an older, grittier appearance that’s perhaps more appropriate for the subject matter. Adding the grain takes the edge of the sharpness, of course, but that’s just part of the style.