Response to what to do about grey, porcelain skin tones with TMAX film

I'm just starting to explore this, but different printing papers have different shaped highlight curves (toe). Some, like the Oriental Segull I just tested, have a flattened area that reduces highlight contrast. Ilford Multigrade IV Deluxe (that I also just ran curves on) is much straighter with less toe. It will give more contrast in the highlights and, for me anyway, perked up skin tones and modeling. The Seagull was very flat and pasty there. There's always a tradeoff for a given contrast grade, and the Seagull did better on midtone contrast. Things like fabric texture and shadow detail were better. Ctein talks about this in Post Exposure- the trick is where the paper produces the best tonal separation. Neither one is better, they just suit different subjects and films. That said, you should be able to get reasonable, though not perfect, results with with almost any combination if the basic exposure and development at close. Not sure if this helps, but it's the path I've been following for similar problems.

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