How to Get Grainy Raw Photography

Noise can sometimes enhance your photo shots

The objective of any photographer, whether amateur or professional, is to get clearly focused, sharply detailed and vividly accurate shots. One of the things to avoid is a grainy or noisy shot. But sometimes, a grainy shot is desired to achieve the gritty dramatic effect you want. There are at least two ways to get a grainy photographed image. One is to get it at source or point of shooting, and another is to get in through post-production work with a competent image editing tool on your PC.

Things You'll Need

• DSLR or prosumer digital camera with adjustable ISO settings
• PC with large memory card of at least 128 Mb
• Image editing or bitmap graphics editing software

Instructions

Using an Image Editing Tool

1. Set your digital camera to save captured images in RAW file format. RAW file formats are camera brand-dependent so you need to refer to the camera's user manual to know the format to help you chose which image editing tool to use. You also need to ensure that your camera memory card has enough capacity to store the RAW file which can range from 2Mb to 12Mb or more per shot, depending on the image resolution size you set. . Consumer cameras generally can be set to store RAW images in uncompressed TIFF file format.

2. Upload the RAW image file from your camera to the PC. Alternatively, you can take out the camera memory card and have it read by a card reader to upload the files to your PC.

3. Launch the image editing software.and open the RAW image file you want to manipulate. Some camera makers have proprietary conversion software to make the file readable in many consumer editing software, while programs like Adobe Photoshop support many RAW formats or have downloadable plug-ins for the purpose.

4. Go into the Noise menu to get the grainy effect you want. Some editing tools may have it under the Effects menu. Photoshop has it under the Filter menu. You should see "add noise" among the choices under it.

5. Click on the "Add Noise" option. In Photoshop, doing so leads to a detail box where a section of the image is sampled and contains the noise parameters you can adjust.

6. Select either Gaussian or Uniform noise In the detail box, as well as the amount of noise, anywhere from 0 to 400 percent, You can check the noise added in real time, and also make the noise monochromatic. Once you have the grainy effect you want, apply the noise filter to the image.

7. Alternatively, apply image sharpening to enhance and make visible the noise that already exists in many RAW image files especially those taken in low light large resolution formats. Under the same Filter menu in Photoshop, select the Sharpen menu and go for the "Unsharp" option. Thus leads you to a detail box where you can apply the sharpening amount and other parameters and see the result before applying it..

Using a Higher ISO Setting

1. Set the camera's ISO higher than what you usually use to get smooth clean shots. Higher ISO settings result in grainier or noisier shots. You can experiment starting at an ISO setting of 400, 800, 1600, up to 10,000 or anything in between depending on the ISO settings your camera supports., and see which one produce the amount of grain you want.

2. Alternatively, set your camera to longer exposure times or slower shutter speeds. This has the effect of increasing noise in your images but you risk getting blurry shots if you don't have a steady hand. It is recommended that you use a camera tripod at these settings.

References

• Add Noise Filter, Photoshop
• Understanding RAW Files
• Use a High ISO to Create Grainy Shots