Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "oboylephoto" 
<oboylephoto@y...> wrote:
> 
> 
> Any suggestions on taming some really grainy tri x scans that were 
> shot about 25 years ago. It looks like they were over developed as 
> well, so they are very contrasty with large reticulated grain. Would 
> like to make some prints from these, have tried USM on a layer, then 
> adjusting the layer transparency to allow some sharpness thru, and 
> using alpha mask tricks. Seems to work farily well, but it needs
> more. 
> I also ran them through noise ninja, and that is somewhat successful 
> at removing the grain. Any other suggestions for making these grainy 
> scans into a creamier print?

In my experience, there is nothing one can do about grain (except learn to love it). 
Scanners can't read each film grain individually so it interprets them as groups of pixels 
which in turn, creates the appearance of even heavier grain. There is no trick to change 
that without modifying the image to the point of loosing other qualities of it and in my 
opinion, it's not worth it.
I personally prefer grainy images which still preserve details and sharpness to the noise 
made by digital cameras. I've seen recently a comparison between an image taken with a 
'good' digital camera and the same image taken on film and scanned. The scanned image, 
magnified, was definitely sharper though with some grain, the other one had no grain but 
no sharpness either. Both pictures were taken with the same lens.