Digital images can look clinically clean. Film grain puts texture back — but flat noise reads as sensor fault rather than emulsion. This tool scales grain by local brightness, because real film shows least grain in blown highlights and most through the midtones, and generates the noise at your chosen grain size so coarse settings produce larger clumps instead of more of the same tiny dots.
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Add photographic film grain to a photo — grain size, colour or monochrome, and a highlight roll-off that keeps blown areas clean.
Digital images can look clinically clean. Film grain puts texture back — but flat noise reads as sensor fault rather than emulsion. This tool scales grain by local brightness, because real film shows least grain in blown highlights and most through the midtones, and generates the noise at your chosen grain size so coarse settings produce larger clumps instead of more of the same tiny dots.
Keep amount around 20–40 for subtle stock; raise grain size for coarse clumps and lower roll-off for even grain across the frame.
Input: JPG, PNG, WebP. Output: JPG, PNG, or WebP. PNG or WebP preserve fine grain that heavy JPG compression can smooth away.
Grain here is weighted by local brightness and generated at a chosen grain size, then sampled up. Flat per-pixel noise ignores both, which is why it reads as sensor fault rather than emulsion.
It reduces grain in bright areas. Real film carries least visible grain where the frame is blown out, so tapering there keeps skies and specular highlights from looking dirty.
Monochrome suits black-and-white conversions and most stylised looks. Colour grain adds independent speckle per channel, closer to colour negative stock, and is more visible.
So results are repeatable. Grading several stills for the same set with one seed gives them consistent grain instead of a different random field each time.
PNG or WebP. JPG compression is specifically good at discarding fine high-frequency detail, which is exactly what grain is, so heavy JPG export can smooth it away.