Enter by Visual Infinity. It was a third-party filter (plugin) that became the industry standard for removing film grain, digital noise, and JPEG artifacts. Unlike the clumsy "Despeckle" or "Median" filters native to Photoshop at the time, Grain Surgery used advanced (for the time) algorithms to analyze the image and smooth out noise while retaining edge detail.
Recommend free, legit plugins that work with Photoshop 7.0 (e.g., Greyscale’s G’MIC-Qt standalone or VirtualDub with noise filters – not native, but workarounds exist). Mention that modern free tools like GIMP (with GMIC plugin) offer grain reduction legally. grain surgery for adobe photoshop 7.0 free download