I mulled over some of the conclusions I came to in the previous post about film being binary. I'm mainly just looking for a Photoshop recipe that approximates the idea of the grain using off-the-rack filters.
NOTE:
These are not finished 'recipes' for digital film grain. They are not meant to look good at this stage. They are 'amped up' for the purpose of discussion, and for getting a good, close look.
Stochastic halftones have a nice random distribution of points.
Using the Crystallize filter makes them clump into irregular shards that seem to resemble film grain at some magnifications.
The reticulation filter has a nice organic look. I applied it to middle gray, then hard mixed it with a black and white photo and blurred the results.
The Crystallize filter makes some nice chunky 'silver halide crystals,' but the reticulation filter seems worth a closer look, as well.
The trick is to get the scales and strengths right. For color I'll do each channel separately and combine them RGB additive style or CMY multiplicative / subtractive style. Not sure it matters which.
UPDATE 10/21/2009
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 public beta promises a
- Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
UPDATE 5/11/2010
Color experiment: Kumi in the Desert 18+ NSFW
