Film Grain Rendering and Parameter Estimation

Abstract

We propose a realistic film grain rendering algorithm based on statistics derived analytically from a physics-based Boolean model that Newson et al. adopted for Monte Carlo simulations of film grain. We also propose formulas for estimation of the model parameters from scanned film grain images. The proposed rendering is computationally efficient and can be used for real-time film grain simulation for a wide range of film grain parameters when the individual film grains are not visible. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for both constant and real-world images, for a six orders of magnitude speed-up compared with the Monte Carlo simulations of the Newson et al. approach.