Digital BW, The Print

Chris,

The fixer you used washed away the "strining", so you didn't get the 
effects of the pyro develpoer.

Scott

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Chris Ellis" 
<christian.ellis@...> wrote:
>
> 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
>