Noise buys texture by spending compressibility
A flat colour is almost free to describe because every pixel repeats. Grain makes those pixels differ on purpose. It can hide gradient banding, stop a large field feeling sterile and make type sit on something that resembles a surface, but every one of those differences has to be stored in the exported file.
| Control | Opening | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Monochrome | Lightness without coloured speckle |
| Grain | 1 px | The spatial size of each sample |
| Opacity | 9% | How much the layer moves the base |
| Blend | Soft light | How light and dark noise mix |
| Seed | 314159 | Which repeatable field is drawn |
When a texture is doing too much
- If body text becomes harder to read, lower opacity before making the grain smaller; fine high-contrast noise competes with letter edges.
- If a background must be tiny, keep a flat or simple gradient version. Noise can multiply file size even when the visual change is slight.
- A seeded procedural surface is not scanned paper. It has no fibres, direction or physical scale unless those are constructed separately.
Questions about the surface
- Why does noise make the file larger?
- Compression works by describing repeated or predictable regions. Noise deliberately makes neighbouring pixels differ, so PNG, JPEG and WebP need more data to describe the same dimensions.
- What does the seed change?
- It chooses the repeatable sequence of pseudo-random values. The same seed, size and grain settings reproduce the same surface instead of changing whenever the page redraws.
- Should noise be coloured?
- Usually not for a paper-like surface. Monochrome noise changes lightness without making red, green and blue speckles. Colour noise is useful when the chromatic texture itself is intended.
Other background constructions
- Solid colourOne colour at a stated pixel size. The smallest file here.
- GradientStops, an angle, and a choice about the space the ramp runs through.
- LibraryForty starting points, each one a stack that stays editable.
- Why gradients bandEight bits, a long ramp, and the grain that trades one artefact for another.