Film Grain

Add a film grain effect to a photo, or generate a grain texture overlay without one: intensity, grain size, mono or colour grain and an analog film look, free in your browser.

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Grain
Film look
Texture size
Background
Film Grain result
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Add a Film Grain Effect to a Photo Online

Film grain is the fine, slightly clumpy texture of silver halide crystals in an analog negative - the thing a clean digital file lacks and a scanned 400 ISO print has plenty of. This filter puts it back, from a subtle 35mm look to the grainy snapshot of a 90s disposable camera. Drop a photo in and it appears with a medium grain already applied; Intensity sets how strong it is and Grain size how coarse, from a fine 100 ISO look at 1 to a pushed, gritty 3200 at 10. The grain is weighted to the midtones the way real film behaves, so deep shadows and blown highlights carry less of it, and Mono or Colour picks between the neutral grain of black-and-white stock and the softly coloured grain of colour negative. The Film look row is a small film emulation on top of the grain and adds the rest of the analog character in one tap: Warm shifts the tones toward a golden cast, Faded lifts the blacks and softens the whites like an old print, and B&W converts the picture before the grain goes on for a grainy black-and-white image; Faded with Colour grain is the retro 80s print, Warm with a coarse grain the 1970s slide. Shuffle grain redraws the pattern in a new random layout if a clump has landed somewhere awkward, such as across a face.

Film Grain Texture and Overlay Generator

Not every job starts with a photo, and a grain image on its own is often the more useful file. Editors, video timelines wanting a cinematic grain pass and design layers often want a grain texture on its own, blended over the footage or artwork with an Overlay, Soft Light or Screen mode. Press "Make a grain texture" on the start screen and the page builds one without any picture: choose HD, 4K, square or portrait, and a background of 50% grey (neutral under Overlay and Soft Light), black (for Screen and Add) or fully transparent, where the grain becomes black and white specks with their own alpha and drops straight onto any layer. The same intensity, size and grain-type controls shape it, and the download is a lossless PNG at the full sheet size, so a 4K texture is a genuine 3840 × 2160 file rather than an upscaled thumbnail.

The Same Grain in the Preview and the File

The grain is generated from a seeded pattern measured in fractions of the picture, not in screen pixels. That means the file you download has the grain in the same places and at the same relative size as the preview on screen, only rendered at the picture's full resolution - a 12 megapixel photo exports at 12 megapixels with grain sized for it, and the details card on the picture shows the grain cell size in export pixels and the current seed. Changing only the intensity keeps the pattern; only Shuffle grain or a different size redraws it.

Formats and Download

PNG keeps every speck exactly as rendered and is the right choice for a texture or anything that will be edited further. JPG is the small option for a finished photo to post, and at high quality it holds the grain well; WebP is smaller still with the same look. Copy puts the result on the clipboard as PNG for pasting into a document or another editor; on a phone the share button sends it to another app. The file name carries the original name plus "-grain" so the untouched original is never overwritten.

Private by Design

A photo with a film look is often a portrait, a wedding shot or a family picture, and those are exactly the files people would rather not hand to a server for a filter. Nothing here leaves the device: the picture is decoded in the browser, the grain is computed in JavaScript on your own processor, and the download is assembled locally. The texture generator makes no request at all. Close the tab and nothing remains.

Frequently Asked Questions About Film Grain

What grain size looks like real film?

For a photo that will be viewed at screen size, a size of 2 or 3 with intensity around 30 to 40 resembles a 400 ISO colour negative; 1 is closer to a fine-grained 100 ISO slide and 6 or above is the coarse, pushed look of high-speed black-and-white film. Judge it at 100% on the download rather than on the small preview, because grain is a full-resolution texture and the preview shows it slightly larger than it will print.

How do I use the grain texture in another program?

Download the grey texture as PNG, place it on a layer above the picture or video, and set the layer blend mode to Overlay or Soft Light; the 50% grey disappears and only the grain shows, and the layer opacity becomes the intensity control. Use the black texture with the Screen or Add mode, or the transparent one as a plain layer with no blend mode at all.

Is my image uploaded to a server?

No. The photo stays in your browser's memory; the grain is drawn on it locally, and the file you download is built on the device. The texture mode never touches a network connection at all.