How to Make a Retro Grainy Photo Effect in Photoshop

PHOTOSHOP POST PROCESSING

Adding grain to a picture is a popular effect used by photographers, artists, and designers alike that want to create a whole new atmosphere on their photos, making them perfect for a wide range of creative projects, from digital art to social media posts. While there are many different ways to achieve this look in Photoshop, today I will show you a very easy method to make a Retro Grainy effect in a matter of minutes without compromising the output quality of your image and that you can use over any of your photos once we finish the effect and create a preset using the Camera Raw Filter.

Please, keep in mind that every image is unique, so the settings I will show you here should be taken as a basis for all of your images and maybe yours may require some different values on each of the settings, but for sure will work on most of them. But before we begin, and if you want to follow this tutorial exactly as described, please download the following free image from Pexels: Download.

Step 1

Open your image in Photoshop.

Step 2

Go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter.

Step 3

In the Caemra Raw Filter window, expand the "Basic" tab and apply the following settings.

Step 4

Next, expand the "Color Mixer" tab and apply the following values for the Hue, Saturation and Luminance.

Step 5

Expand the "Color Grading" tab. Be sure to select the Shadows option and apply the following values.

Step 6

Still in the "Color Grading" tab, select the Highlights and apply the following values.

Step 7

Now expand the "Effects" tab and under "Grain" set the following values.

Step 8

Before applying the effect to the image, we will save all these settings as a new preset to use it later over any other image. To do that, click on the "More Image Settings" icon and from the dropdown menu select "Create Preset".

Step 9

In the Create Preset window, give your new preset a name, select the following options and click OK.

Step 10

Lastly, simply click OK in the Camera Raw Filter window.

A Final Note:

The next time you want to use this photo Effect on any of your pictures, open your image in Photoshop and go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. In the Presets tab, select the "Retro Grainy" preset we've made in this tutorial and then simply click OK in the Camera Raw window to apply it.