How to Make A Photo Less Grainy
Wondering how to make a photo less grainy? Maybe you took a photo is less than ideal lighting conditions. Or maybe your settings were just off. Now you’ve ended up with a photo you like, except for the distracting digital grain and noise. How can you fix it?
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In this post, I’ll be discussing how to make a photo less grainy with my favorite tools, as well as how to prevent the noise in the first place! We have to acknowledge that personal preference plays a role when it comes to the sharpness and clarity of photographs. Some photographers love the look of emphasized grain in film photography. I personally would argue that the grain or noise that occurs in digital photography due to high ISO or low light conditions is less appealing than true film photography grain. I personally would rather take a sharp digital image and then add grain via a film emulation preset. All this to say, this post will be specifically referring to the non-aesthetic grain and noise the can occur in digital photography. Film photography grain is determined by the film stock you use and the development process.
If we haven’t met yet, my name is Kelley Hoagland! I’m a wife, mom of 3, and professional family photographer near Chattanooga, TN. When I was learning photography and growing a business, I found in-home sessions to be the most challenging. Not all homes had adequate natural light for ideal camera settings. I made my fair share of mistakes and produced plenty of grainy photos until I learned how to use flash.
How to Make A Photo Less Grainy After You’ve Taken It
Let’s cut to the chase. You may have stumbled upon this post because you’ve already taken the photo and now you need to fix it! I’ve been there.
Topaz
My favorite tool for making a photo less grainy is Topaz Photo! It integrates with Lightroom (where I do the majority of my photo editing.) If you have a subscription, you can open an image in Topaz from within Lightroom. I click File > Plugin Extras > Process with Topaz Photo AI. I then click “edit a copy”. This opens up my image in the Topaz interface.
Once in the Topaz interface, you can remove noise, sharpen your image, recover out of focus faces, and enhance the image’s resolution. When I want to make a photo less grainy, I typically work within the “Remove Noise” function. Within this function you can choose between “normal” and strong” and also adjust the overall strength. Here I always take the most conservative approach, usually opting for normal. I often find that if you are too liberal with the settings, you image may look plastic and unnatural.
As you can see, with a few quick tweaks in Topaz, the image looks smoother and sharper. Do Note: if you open an image that you’ve edited in Lightroom into Topaz, the color correction you’ve already completed won’t “stick”. The image that will be saved back to Lightroom will look more like your original RAW image. I prefer to make color corrections in Lightroom, complete adjustments in Photoshop, and save that image back to Lightroom before opening it in Topaz.
Lightroom
It is possible to make a photo less grainy within Lightroom. I personally have not used this function very much. You can manually adjust the noise by using the “Luminance” function. I personally have found that if you bump this setting too high, the image will begin to look “plastic” and fake. Lightroom also has a new “Denoise” function that can be useful for making a photo less grainy. However, you must use this function before you open an image in Photoshop. If you make Photoshop edits and then save the image back to Lighroom, the Denoise function will not work!
Personally, I do prefer the results I get from Topaz Photo for this task. However, you may be just as happy with the results you can get in Lightroom if this is the only function you need. The ability to recover focus on faces in blurry photos makes the cost of Topaz worth it for me!
How to Make A Photo Less Grainy Before You Even Take It!
I wouldn’t feel like I had truly done my duty if I had not discussed how to make a photo less grainy before you even take it! This is certainly the ideal that we are going for. It’s great to have tools that can help us every once in a while when the lighting conditions were particularly challenging. However, these edits do take extra time. No one wants to have to correct the grain in every individual photo they take! (Note: I am specifically talking about digital photography in this post. In film photography, grain is determined by the film stock that you choose.)
ISO
If your photos consistently have a lot of noise and grain, it’s time to take a look at your ISO settings. As you may remember from learning the Exposure Triangle, a higher ISO makes your camera sensor more sensitive to light. However, higher ISO settings also result in more grain and noise. If your images are consistently looking grainy or noisy, it may be that you are using an ISO that is too high. I most frequently shoot using the Sony a7iv. I personally find that my images start to look noisy when my ISO is set above 800. Increasing the exposure and shadows in post-production (i.e. Lightroom) exaggerates the grain and noise. Therefore, even if I intentionally underexpose the image, the grain/noise will become more apparent when I try to fix the exposure in Lightroom.
If you are still trying to figure out the Exposure Triangle and what settings to use, check out my free Exposure Triangle Cheat Sheet!
Use Flash
You may be thinking, “that’s all well and good, but what about low light indoor session when I have to use a high ISO?” I struggled with this for years and got burned on a few sessions, having to do re-shoots because of horrible photos taken on bad weather days. I got tired of stressing over the light for in-home sessions and decided it was time to learn how to use flash.
Using flash during low light conditions allows you to use a lower ISO, resulting in brighter, sharper images. Now that I know how to use flash during my in-home sessions, it’s fairly rare that I have to correct grain and noise in my images. If you’re looking for some help in the process of learning flash photography for in home settings, I have created some resources for you! Check out my free quick-start flash photography course.
Conclusion: How To Make A Photo Less Grainy
I hope you’ve found this post helpful in answering the question of how to make a photo less grainy. It’s of course always best to prevent a grainy, noisy photo in the first place by choosing correct camera settings (ISO). In some low light situations, this may require you to bring in supplemental lighting with flash. However, when your best efforts result in a noisy photo, there are tools out there that can help you correct the image such as Topaz and Lightroom!