A print property closely related to color and with a strong dependency on the choices made for the sake of color separation is the smoothness of a printed pattern. While certain obvious choices are simply related to grain, such as the degree of black ink use in colorant-channel imaging pipelines, the domain of all possible printable patterns that HANS (Halftone Area Neugebauer Separation) [1] provides access to eludes such simple rules of thumb. At the same time, the magnitude of the new control domain gives access to new patterns that allow for a reduction of grain and an increase in smoothness beyond what is possible using conventional techniques. In this paper, a framework for optimizing smoothness is presented first, followed by a mechanism for varying it in a controlled and continuous way, when the aim is a given trade-off between smoothness and other attributes such as colorant use efficiency or robustness to perturbations.