Making digital photos look like film is something many people are interested in, but achieving authentic results can be tricky. One area that often gets overlooked is the appearance of grain. Getting it right can significantly enhance your images by mimicking the subtle imperfections that define film.
Coming to you from Adam Gough of Goughie, this thorough video explains how to use Lightroom to recreate film-like grain. Gough outlines three key adjustments to focus on. First, grain should be more prominent in midtones and highlights, with minimal grain in extreme shadows and highlights. Second, clarity and sharpness must be reduced as grain increases, mirroring the limited detail film grain can resolve. Finally, the transition between areas of different grain intensity must be smooth to avoid jarring cutoffs. These principles are important because grain affects not only the texture of your images but also the overall mood and realism.
Gough demonstrates the step-by-step process in Lightroom, starting with selecting an image that has both highlights and shadows for testing. By using luminance masks, he shows how to apply grain selectively to different tonal ranges, ensuring midtones and highlights carry the most detail. Extreme shadows and highlights are kept almost grain-free, preventing overdone effects. Feathering each mask ensures smooth blending between tonal ranges. This nuanced approach avoids the artificial appearance of applying grain uniformly across the entire image.
Adjusting clarity alongside grain is another critical step. Gough explains how clarity impacts the softness and detail in areas where grain is applied. For example, reducing clarity in shadows softens transitions, while lowering it in highlights creates a subtle blooming effect. These tweaks mimic the organic look of film, where fine detail naturally diminishes as grain increases.
For convenience, Gough recommends saving these adjustments as a Lightroom preset. By isolating masks and grain settings, you can easily reapply the effect to other images. He also shows how exposure adjustments dynamically shift grain placement, further enhancing the flexibility of this workflow. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Gough.
