AI photography

Member lesson

Grain, and why clean looks wrong

Lesson 7 of 10 in AI photography.

Lesson

A generated image is mathematically clean, and nothing photographic is. Every real picture carries the texture of its capture: grain, sensor noise, the faint unevenness of a lens. Remove all of that and the brain reads the picture as a render before it reads anything else.

A hand shakes fine dark specks from a small salt cellar over a large print of a seaside sky. The sprinkled half has a soft grainy texture; the other half is glassy smooth, with visible banding in the sky.
The dusted half reads as a photograph. The clean half shows its bands and looks rendered.
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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Film's physical texture. On digital work it is added, and it is doing a real job.”

    • Depth of field
    • Transition zone
    • Flaw fidelity
    • Grain
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Digital sensor texture. Different character from grain, and usually less pleasant.”

    • Plastic skin
    • Asymmetry
    • Noise
    • Green cast
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Fine noise that breaks up banding in smooth gradients.”

    • Dither
    • Light wrap
    • Hybrid shoot
    • Trust

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