How to Fix Grainy Photos in Photoshop & Lightroom
So, in this Article, We are going to take a look at How to Fix Grainy Photos in Photoshop and Lightroom without using any other plugins.
What is a Grainy Photo?
A Grainy Photo is a sort of photo which has tiny circles of light colors. These circles are called Film Grain. It does not affect the quality of an image, but when you zoom in to the photo, you will see these tiny circles or film grain on the surface of the picture.
Now, Let’s talk about why this happens to most of the amateur photographers who just started and do not know about the ISO.
Why does this happen?
There are 3 different reasons why your photos are grainy. The reasons include ISO not correctly set, and the lighting is not right, the camera is not the best.
ISO: Most of the amateur photographers do not know how to set the ISO so, if they didn’t shoot in the proper lighting, then they will increase the ISO instead of decreasing the shutter speed or lowering the aperture, which results in a grainy photo.
Always Remember, ISO is very sensitive; you can’t increase it to its limits because it results in Grain in the photo. So, keep the ISO to the lowest possible number, which will reduce the amount of Film Grain in photos.
Lighting: If the lighting is not proper or not sufficient, then it also results in a grainy photo. It is also linked to the ISO. Also, if you use a flash to increase the exposure of your photo, then it also results in a grainy photo.
Camera: If you are shooting with a smartphone or a small sensor camera, then it also results in a grainy photo. As it is not able to capture pictures in low light conditions. This thing mostly happens in a smartphone or smaller megapixel camera.
Now, let’s talk about How to fix the Grainy Photos in Photoshop and Lightroom.
How to Prevent an Image from turning out Grainy?
Here are the few things that you can do to prevent your image from turning out graining.
1. Use Low ISO
Always use ISO to lowest possible because ISO is very sensitive we can’t use it on a high setting because it will make the image look grainy. So, set the ISO to the lowest.
2. Shoot in RAW
Always shoot in RAW Format because if you shoot in RAW format, at the time of post-processing or editing the image, your image will have less noise and film grain.
How to Fix Grainy Photos in Photoshop
I am dividing the How to Fix Grainy Photos in Photoshop in two parts one is How to fix the grain in Camera Raw Filter, and the other one is How to fix grain with Reduce Noise filter.
Part 1. Fix the Grain with Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop
Step 1. Open Photoshop
Open Photoshop and select the image which has grain. And after deciding that, open it with Photoshop by going File>Open and open it.
Step 2. Go to Camera Raw Filter
After opening the image, now go to Filter>Camera Raw Filter and open it.
After Opening Camer Raw Filters, now go to the third tab, which is detailing in the camera raw filter and now adjust the Luminance: 100, Luminance Detail: 50, Luminance Contrast: 30, and leave the color as it is and just click Ok.
Step 3. Save the Image
After doing all the things, now you have to save the image. To save the image in Photoshop, you have to go to File>Save and choose the desired location and save the image.
Now I Will show you the before and after the image of the photo that I did with the Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop.
As you can see in the above image, the left one is the Before using the Camera Raw Filter, and the right one is after using the Camera Raw Filter.
I noticed a thing that if your image has more grain than it is hard for Photoshop’s Raw Camera Filter to remove the grain, but if there is less amount of grain in the picture, then you will see a significant difference.
Part 2. Fix the Grain with Reduce Noise Filter in Photoshop
Step 1. Open Photoshop
Open Photoshop and choose the image which has grain. And after selecting the image, open it with Photoshop by going File>Open.
Step 2. Go to Reduce Noise Filter
After opening the image in Photoshop, Now Go to Filter>Noise>Reduce Noise
After opening the Reduce Noise Filter, then you will see 4 different options in Basic Tab, which are Strength, Preserve Details, Reduce Color Noise, Sharpen Details.
The Strength is set at 6 by default. You have to change the settings as the above image. Change the Strenght: 10, Preserve Details: 60%, Reduce Color Noise: 100%, and Sharpen Details: 25%.
Step 3. Save the Image
After doing all the things that I mentioned above, now its time to save the image and see the final results. To save the image in Photoshop, you have to go to File>Save and choose the desired location and save the image.
After doing that, you will see a slight difference in your image as photoshop has removed a small amount of grain from the image.
Now, I will show you the before and after of the above image by using the Reduce Noise filter of Photoshop.
After using the Reduce Noise Filter in this image, I see a slight notice from Camera Raw Filter, in my opinion, it worked better than the Camera Raw Filter. So, I recommend you to try both then go with the image you liked the most.
How to Fix Grainy Photos in Lightroom
Step 1. Open Lightroom
Open Lightroom and click on Import to import any image that has grain in Lightroom. After importing the image, the image will be imported in Library Tab.
Step. 2 Go to Develop Tab
After importing the image, now you have to go to the Develop Tab to edit your photo. The Develop Tab is beside the Library tab.
Step 3. Go to Noise Reduction
After going to the Develop Tab, now you what to go to the editing panel on the right side of your screen and scroll down a little to use the Noise Reduction Sliders.
Now, change the settings according to the image above. Change Luminance: 100, Detail: 50, and Contrast: 40 and leave the Color slider as it is.
Step 4. Save the Image
After doing all the things that I mentioned above, now you have to save the image. To save the image, you have to go to File>Export and choose the desired location and just save the image.
Now, I will show the before and after of the above picture after using the Lightroom Noise Reduction Sliders.
Here is the before and after the image of the image I am using. I see that Lightroom has done a pretty good job of removing the grain from the Image.
So, that’s how you can remove the grain from your photos with Photoshop and Lightroom without using any other plugins.
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