There exists an increasing interest in reproducing surface appearances by means of digital printing, thereby expanding the reproduction from only color to reproduction of texture and reflection properties such as the BRDF. Previous research has focused on different ways to obtain control of the optical characteristics of digital prints, either by introducing additional inks or by modulating the surface texture on a macro level. The authors propose to utilize the different parameters of a printing system, which influence aspects such as the ink deposition and drying time, to impact the roughness of the print surface on a micro level. By investigating relationships between optical and geometric characteristics of printed surfaces, we study the hypothesis that both surface characteristics can be estimated from a single roughness parameter. From these findings, we propose a workflow to control reflection properties (including color) of a printed surface by determining ink coverage values and print parameters. © 2015 Society for Imaging Science and Technology.