: Hi Noise4000 (do you have a name?),

: The illustrations on your site are excellent and revealing, and yes, it's grain! The sometimes unpleasant consequence of the CanoScan's extreme sharpness. You can see the identical pattern in the Photo CD scan: it is just softer. If it were noise it would be different. The Photo CD doesn't have as good resolution/detail as the CanoScan, hence less grain is visible. The print is REALLY soft. Camera shop prints are typically too soft to reveal grain-- this could be deliberate. I've had another person send me Kodak Gold 200 results-- it's a sharp but quite grainy film. I'll forward you his e-mail. There are software solutions, such as blur with threshold, and something new coming in Picture Window Pro ( http://www.dl-c.com ). I will have more to say later-- I may make it a little campaign to educate people about this phenomenon.