Getting grainy digitial prints?

[nightfly]

I like grainy, Daido Moriyama style photos. I've gotten my development and photoshop technique down so that I can get this working right on screen but my prints seem to smooth out the grain more than I would like.

I'm using black only printing on an Epson 1280 but my prints are a little less contrasty and grainy than I would like (I know the opposite problem most people have). I can't quite wrap my brain around printing profiles and that sort of thing. Is there a simple way to get the printer to give me the kind of graininess I'm seeing on screen? I don't want to introduce noise or anything or fake the grain as I like what I'm seeing on screen. I just want to see it on paper.

 

[iml]

High contrast, high grain b&w prints really are best done with film, IMO, especially if you're printing large.

Not very helpful, but there you go.

Bear in mind that you're probably printing at 300ppi whereas you're viewing on-screen at a much lower res of 72ppi. You need to add more noise/grain for print, but unless you're careful the result will be pretty ugly and un-filmlike. Trial and error I suppose.

 

[nightfly]

Well I'm using film but I assume you mean chemicals and paper. Unfortunatley all the darkrooms I used to rent space at have closed and I do like the convience of printing at home. Maybe I just reduce the printing DPI and try that or bump up the sharpening a little more.

 

[iml]

Ah, sorry, I misread your post and assumed you were starting with digital files. But the general point holds, trial and error with files optimised for printing rather than looking right on-screen.

 

[Gid]

You need to look at the images on screen at a size that equates to the print dpi. For example, if your screen display is 72 ppi and you are printing at 300 dpi then you need to view the image on screen at (300/72) * 100 in order to assess what it will look like when printed. If you look at a 100% crop then what you see is what the print would look like if printed at your screen resolution (e.g. 72 dpi).

You also need to calibrate your monitor (adobe gamma is the cheap way if you use windows - I think Macs do it automatically).

If you don't want to use printer profiles then its a case of trial and error - adjusting what you see on screen until what comes out of the printer matches your expectations. Much easier to get a profile for your printer.

Good luck - I know how frustrating it can be.