How to Reduce Grain in Premiere Pro CC 2017 without Plugins

Grain is one of the most frustrating things to deal with in video footage. Those random, flickering color dots make everything look noisy and unprofessional. Grain usually shows up when you shoot in low light, use a high ISO setting, or work with older camera equipment.

Premiere Pro does not have a dedicated noise reduction tool built in, but you can reduce grain using the Median effect with masks. This is not a miracle fix. True professional noise reduction is computationally intensive and works best in dedicated tools like After Effects or plugins like NeatVideo. But if you need a quick improvement without leaving Premiere Pro, this technique works.

How to Reduce Grain in Premiere Pro

1. Import your footage and place it on the timeline. Scrub through and identify the areas with the most visible grain. Grain is usually most noticeable in shadows and solid-colored areas like skin, walls, and sky.
2. Go to the Effects panel and navigate to Video Effects > Noise & Grain > Median.
3. Drag the Median effect onto your footage.
4. In Effect Controls, find the Median effect. At this point, the effect is applied to the entire frame, which will blur everything including the details you want to keep sharp.

Creating Masks for Targeted Noise Reduction

5. Click one of the mask tools beneath the Median effect name (rectangle, ellipse, or pen tool). Draw a mask around one of the grainy areas you want to clean up. For example, draw an ellipse around a face, or a rectangle over a section of sky.
6. Set the Mask Feather to about 100 pixels. This creates a soft transition at the edges of the mask so the noise reduction blends naturally into the surrounding areas.
7. Create additional masks for other grainy areas. You can have multiple masks on the same effect, each targeting a different region.
8. Adjust the Radius slider at the bottom of the Median effect. This controls the strength of the noise reduction. Higher values smooth out more grain but also soften the image more. Start low (around 3-5) and increase until the grain is reduced to an acceptable level without losing too much detail.

Limitations

The Median effect works by averaging nearby pixels, which reduces noise but also reduces detail. This is why masking is important. You want to apply it only to areas where detail loss is acceptable (smooth surfaces, sky, out-of-focus backgrounds) and avoid areas where you need sharpness (eyes, text, fine textures).

Better Alternatives

If grain reduction is critical to your project, consider these options:

• After Effects. The Remove Grain effect in AE is significantly more powerful and does a better job of separating noise from detail.
• NeatVideo is a professional plugin that works inside Premiere Pro and gives excellent results. It is the industry standard for noise reduction.
• DaVinci Resolve has built-in temporal and spatial noise reduction that is very effective and available in the free version.

Tips

• Grain is more visible in dark areas. Focus your masks on shadows, underexposed areas, and solid colors where grain stands out the most.
• Don’t over-smooth. A little grain can actually look cinematic. Over-smoothing makes footage look plastic and artificial. Finding the right balance is key.
• Brighten first. Sometimes slightly increasing the exposure with Lumetri Color makes the grain less noticeable without any noise reduction at all.
• Shoot with grain reduction in mind. If you know a shoot will be in low light, use the lowest ISO you can get away with and add more light to the scene if possible.

That is how you reduce grain in Premiere Pro without plugins. It is a quick and dirty approach, but for minor grain issues it can make a noticeable difference.