Affinity Designer. What are the best values for the Noise effect in professional printing?

[dinosaura 1]

Hi, there. I would like advice from those who have already had professional experience with printing from Affinity.
I'm working with the noise effect/filter on Affinity, on a file at 300dpi for a 1:1 print scale.
What is the lowest value of the noise that I can use to be visible in print? And, vice versa, is there a very high value that disturbs printing?

Thanks so much!

[GabrielM 482]

Hi @dinosaura,

The amount of noise you can have would really depend on how accurate the printer is. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[dinosaura 1]

Thanks @GabrielM.

I'm still afraid that less than 20-25 won't see anything, even in very good print...

 

[GabrielM 482]

You would have to test that on your printer and find a value that suits your needs

[dinosaura 1]

My printer is very poor! That's why I was wondering if anyone had experience in publishing or something.

[kaffeeundsalz 51]

Hi @dinosaura,

we often use the Add Noise filter here in magazine publishing to give digital photos a more analog, grainy film look. Provided that you do offset printing with a standard 300 dpi, we had good results with a value of 9-11 percent for a very subtle noise effect. We'd then go as high as 25 percent for a more grainy look. Added noise is much more visible on large single-colored areas. This means that for images with very few details, we'd generally use lower values.  Also note that the Add Noise filter doesn't have a grain size slider, which limits the types of effects that you can achieve.

Hope this helps.

All the best
kaffeeundsalz

[douglasrthomson 13]

53 minutes ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

Hi @dinosaura,

we often use the Add Noise filter here in magazine publishing to give digital photos a more analog, grainy film look. Provided that you do offset printing with a standard 300 dpi, we had good results with a value of 9-11 percent for a very subtle noise effect. We'd then go as high as 25 percent for a more grainy look. Added noise is much more visible on large single-colored areas. This means that for images with very few details, we'd generally use lower values.  Also note that the Add Noise filter doesn't have a grain size slider which limits the types of effects that you can achieve.

Hope this helps.

All the best
kaffeeundsalz

Thanks for the info. Very useful.

[dinosaura 1]

Thank you @kaffeeundsalz. That was very helpful!

[Fixx 410]

I think there are no noise filters in Designer. You can add noise to colour items 0–100 %. With high res documents (300 dpi and up) in practice high percentage noise in never too garish and may disappear below 50 % (or even with higher value, depending press method and your eye sight). 

[kaffeeundsalz 51]

Hi @Fixx, thank you for pointing this out. I completely missed the "Affinity Designer" part in the thread title. In my post, I was referring to the Add Noise filter in Affinity Photo. There's no such filter in Affinity Designer. What the OP probably means is the color's noise property, but it might be a completely different story with this one since I can't say anything related to professional printing about it. Sorry for the confusion.