You can definitely do it with After Effects. If not with the standard tools like I did with PhotoShop, you can use a suite like MagicBullet to achieve similar results.
The reason it's so dark and grainy actually has to do with how cinema film captures and displays colour...it's more wistful...
I was messing around with trying to achieve a cinematic look and colour scape of modern film. Please let me know what you think guys. The author of the original image and contributions were already included in the image. What a fantastic picture you guys; probably my favourite of a space battle...