For an image editing application, a tool in a graphical user interface (GUI) for making images appear grainy like older photographs is provided. The graininess effects tool blends a background grain image with a subject image. The visibility of graininess in the resulting final grainy image is controlled by the brightness in the subject image itself. The blending of the background grain image and the subject image includes (i) removing positive bias from the background grain image, (ii) performing multiplicative blending by multiplying the bias-removed background image with the subject image, and (iii) performing additive blending by adding the subject image with a weighted result of the multiplicative blending.