Who we are and what we're all about
Grainmaker has been carefully crafted, roll by roll, by a small team of film lab technicians and photographers to create digital tools with an analogue touch.
Recognising that many film photographers are moving toward digital workflows, and many digital photographers want the look and feel of analogue photography, we're filling in the gaps and looking to provide exceptional, unique and genuine film artefacts that can be used with your digital photographs to create rich, textural, compelling images.
We've used state of the art, industrial film processers and scanners and developed thousands of film rolls to extract all the best bits, then formatted them to be straight forward and with instant, effective results.
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For all enquiries contact hello@grainmaker.co
Frequently Asked Questions
Feel free to email us if your enquiry isn't covered below.
What apps and programs does Grainmaker work with?
Grainmaker has been designed to be currently used with Adobe Photoshop.
The simplest reason for this is the nuance in how we've built Grainmaker and results it produces. The most effective way to use Grainmaker is by building up layers of artefacts ontop of your digital photographs, layer by layer. Grain overlays are stacked on the initial photo, and light leaks, date stamps, film borders and other analogue artefacts are then stacked ontop of those, in a modular workflow.
It's perhaps best to think of your photos from an almost graphic design process - you're adding elements, stacking artefacts, formatting borders and so on so forth, and this is best done in Photoshop for now!
Lightroom's limited ability to integrate these components is potentially part of the reason most Lightroom film presets end up looking similar to one another and never look particularly convincing!
What makes Grainmaker different to other film presets?
We've built Grainmaker with an emphasise on texture and tactility.
A lot of other film presets focus almost exclusively on colour grading to achieve a 'film like' look, and while it's an important variable, it's only part of the picture.
We think a lot of the magic of film photography lays in the nuances; film grain that's not completely uniform, tiny specks of dust and scuff marks, right up to imposing light leaks, date stamps, wildly damaged film, etc.
Exploring these elements, combining them and building layers of various textures upon your digital photographs is what we think leads to the most compelling and successful film simulations.
How has Grainmaker been created?
Grainmaker has been built by a small and passionate team of film lab technicians, parallel to running a film lab.
This is has given us both very deep knowledge on film photography, as well as access and experience with the technical components of film; the processing, the equipment, why things look the way they do and how to utilise these elements best.
We've scanned tens of thousands of rolls and have dealt with film in just about every form it could possibly come in.
Old film, new film, damaged film, souped film, through just about every camera and format under the sun.
This has laid the groundwork for how we've then started constructing the various components of Grainmaker, collecting the most exciting and intruiging artefacts from every roll and bringing them into a digital photography workflow.
What are the future plans for Grainmaker?
We're going to look to keep expanding our collection of analogue film artefacts, and keep providing the best possible film simulations we can.
If the potential to build an app is possible, we'll look to build something for mobile users!
We're also going to be looking at what's possible in regards to collaborations with photographers - seeing if we can build more ambitious projects and ideas!
ARE REFUNDS POSSIBLE?
Absolutely! If you've purchased Grainmaker and realised for whatever reason you aren't 100% satisfied, feel free to email us at hello@grainmaker.co and we'll give you a full refund.