Adding noise anyone?

[tonygamble]

There is a thread that ran on DPReview with the suggestion that adding some noise makes a digital photo look 'less digital'.

The thread soon runs out of steam, as oft happens at DPR, but the first page of messages gets the point across. It is:-
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readf ... e=32800945

Does anyone around here use PWP to make their digital photos look more like old fashioned film?

Tony

[MikeG]

Not me.

I only ever try to remove it, and even then I'm not quite as obsesseive about it as I used to be. But then I'm a long way from being a pro shooter. And I'm more of technician than an artist.

Mike.

[den]

For me, photo-realistic images will have 2 to 3% luminuos/chromatic noise. Otherwise, they will appear too 'plastic'.

I will add RGB noise to a color landscape image's nearly clipped cloud highlights to make the near clipping less obvious.

For black/white images... added noise can be an artistic benefit. See: http://www.ncplus.net/~birchbay/tutorials/bw/bw01.htm

When doing color portrait skin smoothing, adding RGB noise can again relieve the tendency for skin to look un-natural. See: http://www.dl-c.com/cgi-bin/discus/show ... #POST13798 and the posting immediately above.

To prevent/de-emphasize banding when making contrast/color adjustments to a color landscape image's 'near night time' skies, RGB noise can be used.

[MikeG]

Den,

At first I read your post with horror! Add noise! Whatever next! But then as I thought about it, and followed the links I recalled that I have had occasions where the skin looked 'plasticky' so, once again thanks for the tip.
I also noted the idea to use the spec removal tool for shiny noses. I'd never have though of doing that in a million years - how do you come up with these ideas?

Mike.

[tonygamble]

Mike,

You said "I recalled that I have had occasions where the skin looked 'plasticky' so, once again thanks for the tip."

I'm surprised that so few PWP users have responded to this thread (but then I would say that wouldn't I!!).

Ever since I started with digital I have been aware of the debate about losing 'that film look'. And maybe it is the lack of grain that is much to do with this.

I have looked at Den's two URL's and extracted what I thought were the key points about how he adds noise. I have to admit that the first route does sound pretty time consuming and not something you'd want to add to a batch of prints. The second, if you are around Den, would be easier to use but what in your book is a 'large soft radius' ?

1. "Grain [noise] can also be added to monochrome images to provide vintage realism. Use the Noise transform [HSV,V] with amounts around 3% or preference. A good film grain texture, 'grain-tm400.png' [warning: 3119x4679 pixels, 11.8MB], can be downloaded or a 200x300 pixel, BW, 'full range', png tile of this grain is here [50KB]. The large file is centered around 50% gray, so expand to 'full range' in the Levels and Color transform. To use it as a texture, convert it to an 8-bit BW tiff. This allows it to be used as its own mask as the Overlay image in the Composite-Blend transform so that you can easily adjust amounts with the mask black/white sliders."

2. "In severe applications, the applied image area tends to loose contrast and posterize... this sometimes can be compensated with the 'ADD Noise' tool, set with a large soft radius and 99% transparency..."

Maybe noise does not recreate the feel of film? Any ideas then, folk, what might?

Tony

[den]

Tony...

Point 1:
Most photo-realistic images will have the 2->3% noise (grain) naturally occuring in the RAW conversion or camera jpg image [assuming proper exposure and near full dynamic range]... so perhaps adding noise should be considered as a 'restorative' step when post-processing edits remove the noise. Also, noise restoration may be image area specific and not needed for the entire image.

Scaling should also be considered. 2x3 pixel noise for a 2000x3000 pixels image would be 'gross' for a web size image: 533x800 pixels.

Point 2:
PWP's Brushes... I will initially use varying radii with a 90% transparency and a 90% softness. Stamping [multiple left mouse clicks with slight relocations] rather than Painting [left mouse click-hold-drag], letting the 'stamping' effect accumulate to a preference. For a stronger incremental stamping effect...decrease the transparency.

Speck-Noise-1.JPG (34.2 KiB) Viewed 6641 times

[MikeG]

Tony/Den,

I've now tried the speck removal/add noise technique on a more severely blown skin tone image that your (Den's) example and was very impressed with ease of use compared to the clone tool. I was surprised that it worked so well, though having re-read 'Help' on the Speck Removal tool I understand why it works.
I noted that the transparency setting of the Add Noise tool has to be selected with care.

Overall I'm delighted to have learnt a technique to address an issue that I've struggled with up to now.

Keep those tips coming!

Mike.

[tonygamble]

Mike, Den,

Would you ever consider applying the effect to the whole image?

If you Google 'Making digital photographs look like film' it finds 40 million entries. A quick browse through the first page seems to find, mainly, people flogging off Photoshop add-ons - or rather cumbersome Photoshop work flows.

I have five A3 enlargements next to this PC. Three are digital and two film. I can see a difference, but don't know what it is. I am sure it is not simply snobbery that makes some photographers stay with film - and hence my quest to see if anyone around here has worked out what the difference is and how to achieve it with PWP.

Tony

[den]

Could it be that the film prints where produced/developed by a commercial film service and the digital prints produced with medium quality consumer available inkjet printers/papers and computer system?

[tonygamble]

Yes, Den, that is certainly why.

What fascinates me is 'what is the difference?'.

Less sharpness? Grain in the shadows? Longer tonal range? Shorter tonal range?

In other words, how do I take a digital file and use PWP so that it fools the film enthusiasts into thinking it was shot on film?

Tony