Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 524)

518 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Effects and animation presets
Last updated 12/21/2009
Original (upper-left) contains unwanted edges after keying (lower-left) that are removed with Simple Choker (lower-right).
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“ Keying introduction and resources ” on page 383
Noise & Grain effects
Work with Grain effects
Almost every digital image captured from the real world contains grain or visual noise caused by the recording,
encoding, scanning, or reproduction processes and by the equipment used to create the image. Examples include the
faint static of analog video, compression artifacts from digital cameras, halftone patterns from scanned prints, CCD
noise from digital image sensors, and the characteristic speckle pattern of chemical photography, known as film grain.
Noise isn’t necessarily bad; it’s often added to images to create a mood or tie elements together, such as adding film
grain to a computer-generated object to integrate it into a photographed scene. However, noise can be unwanted for
aesthetic reasons. Archival footage or high-speed photography may appear unpleasantly grainy; digital compression
artifacts or halftone patterns may mar an image; or noise may interfere with technical processes such as bluescreen
compositing.
Technical reasons also exist for reducing noise. For example, compression algorithms usually achieve smaller file sizes
if the input material is less noisy, so noise reduction is a valuable preprocessing step for work such as DVD creation
and video streaming.
The Add Grain, Match Grain, and Remove Grain effects allow you to manipulate grain that appears more or less evenly
over an entire image. Grain effects can’t correct image problems that affect only a few pixels, such as dust, salt and
pepper noise, or analog video dropouts.
The Add Grain effect generates new grain from nothing; it doesn’t take samples from existing grain. Instead,
parameters and presets for different types of film can be used to synthesize different types of grain.
The Remove Grain and Match Grain effects use a two-step process to manipulate grain without affecting the edges,
sharpness, or highlights of an image. First, the grain is sampled, either automatically or manually; second, the grain is
analyzed and portrayed by a mathematical model, which the effect uses to add, remove, or match the grain.