Advanced film grain

I would love to see a more advanced Film Grain tool in Capture One.

The current Film Grain tool applies grain quite uniformly across the entire image. While this works well for adding texture, I would love to have more control over how the grain is distributed throughout the image, both tonally and spatially.

Tonal Grain Distribution

It would be great to control how much grain appears in different tonal ranges.

For example, I might want:

• More grain in the shadows

• Moderate grain in the midtones

• Very little grain in the highlights

• Reduced grain on skin tones

Ideally, this could work similarly to a Luma Range, with controls for where the grain starts and fades between shadows, midtones and highlights.

Layer and Mask Support

It would also be extremely useful if Film Grain could be applied as a normal layer adjustment.

This would allow Capture One’s existing masking tools - such as Luma Range, Subject Mask, Skin Mask and brushes - to control where grain appears.

For example, I could add stronger grain to the environment while keeping grain more subtle on a person’s skin.

Luminance and Color Grain

Another useful addition would be separate controls for luminance and chroma grain.

Color film does not necessarily produce completely monochromatic texture. Having the ability to introduce subtle color variation into the grain could help create a more convincing film-like result.

Controls could include:

• Luminance Grain Amount

• Chroma Grain Amount

• Chroma Grain Saturation

• Chroma Grain Size

This could be subtle by default, rather than simply creating obvious RGB noise.

Grain Characteristics

I would also love more control over the physical appearance of the grain itself:

• Grain Amount

• Grain Size

• Grain Sharpness / Softness

• Grain Blur

• Grain Clumping / Irregularity

• Grain Contrast

• Grain Density

One of the things that makes digital grain look artificial is when every grain particle has approximately the same size and distribution. Some control over irregularity or clumping could make the texture feel much more organic.

Overall goal

Rather than Film Grain being an effect placed uniformly on top of the finished image, I would love to see Capture One develop it into a more advanced texture tool that can interact with the tones, colors and masks of the photograph.

Capture One already has extremely powerful tools for controlling where adjustments affect an image. Bringing some of that same control to Film Grain could make it a much more powerful tool for creating convincing analog-inspired looks.