Digital BW, The Print

I used pyro on a couple of films a while back and while I was
impressed with the lack of grain in areas of continuous tone (sky
etc.) I found the grain quite exagerated in other areas compared to
some other developers.  

I used FP 4 and Pan F in 35mm and have a Minolta Scan Dual III.  The
Pan F was fairly grainless but was very high contrast so highlights
didn't hold a great deal of detail.  I didn't use an alkaline fixer
which I understand makes a difference to the stain.  Perhaps I should
have another go with an alkaline fix and reduce my dev time...  (I'm
afraid I've been chasing silver bullets for a while and never settle
long enough on any technique to really work it out properly.  When
will I learn?)

One idea I've recently had was simulating the effects of Pyro in
Photoshop.

Roughly speakly:  

1)  Develop and scan your film as normal - I like to apply a slight
USM with no threshold to make the grain less mushy, but your scanner
might be better than this.
2)  Use grain removal software (eg Neat Image / Noise Ninja) to
produce a reduced grain version of the original.
3)  Create a photoshop file with two layers:  the full grain and the
smooth.  Probably put the grainy version on the bottom.
4)  Create a layer mask for the top layer using the technique
described for capture sharpening here:
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357-2.html.  Blend the two
images by eg setting the opacity of the top layer to 50%.

I've inconclusively played around with this but wonder if anyone else
has some similar techniques up their sleeve.

Some further thoughts:

1)  You could do this in reverse using digital capture (another silver
bullet):  your initial capture becomes your grain-free layer and you
can create a layer with added noise as your grain layer.
2)  Speculatively:  you could use a pyro negative to emphasise this
effect if you could somehow separate the grain and the mask into
layers.  You would probably need a really good stain to stand any
chance of getting this to work.

Chris