Using the Add Grain Operator

The grain from the Add Grain operator is very subtle and controllable. There are two approaches to adding grain with this operator:

• You can use the granularity curves for an existing film stock.
• You can use the Custom option to exactly match the grain of another clip.

When you choose a film stock from the Film Stock list, the built-in granularity curves for the corresponding Kodak emulsion are used, and the RGB Gain parameters that you set are translated as scaling factors for the curves.

This approach is explained in Using Built-In Granularity Curves.

With the Custom option, you use the Add Grain curve editor to build a granularity curve. This method is briefly described in Using Custom Granularity Curves. When you use the Custom option, you usually also use the Match Grain feature. Thus, the curve editor (and the other controls for the Custom option) are described in detail in Matching Grain.

Note: For all approaches, you can also set the F-stop and RGB Radius fields.

The Add Grain operator can be added to a layer, as well as to an entire composite. For example, if you removed grain from all the layers such that it is even everywhere in the composite, you can add the Add Grain operator to the Composite operator to re-grain all elements at once.