Density Fine Adjust: what is meant by "High, Medium, Low"?

[georgec22]

There are two was to adjust toner density in the printer settings: "Density" and "Density (Fine Adjust)". 

The "Density (Fine Adjust)" options offer the ability, for each of the CMYK colors, to adjust a High/Medium/Low setting. 

What exactly do these High/Medium/Low settings refer to? 

In othe words, I do not understand what the Magenta > High setting will affect compared to the Magenta > Medium setting, and of course the Magenta > Low setting. 

What is the difference between making the Magenta > High -8 and the Magenta > Low +8? 

How do these settings differ from the simpler "Density" settings which have a +/- 8 levels for each CMYK color. These settings make sense to me. 

But I have no clue what the High/Medium/Low sub-settings refer to. The manual has no infomation. 

[shadowsports]

Greetings George,

These settings have to do with the percentage of coverage.  Low, Med, or High density. 

Low and medium will save toner, but might not look as deep or rich in some cases like high would. 

So the first is a overall percentage of coverage. (Level)

The fine adjustment allows for more granular control of tone or shading.  

[georgec22]

Thanks. I was digging around the settings, and in a different area there is actual a place to choose Density High/Medium/Low, so I assume these settings are for when you choose one of these 3 main settings. 

that's what confused me, there seemed to be no place to choose High/Medium/Low. 

If I understand it correctly, that means it allows you to have a set of CMYK levels for the High setting, and separate CMYK settings for the Medium/Low. Then you can just choose from these H/M/L presets instead of manually editing the CMYK density settings back and forth all the time. 

which is handy. 

[georgec22]

OK I am confused again. That "Density Fine Adjustment" menu setting I referred to in my previous post does not offer High/Medium/Low, but instead a +/- setting with a range of -2 to Zero to +2. 

How exactly does this correlate to the High/Medium/Low density settings in the Density > Density (Fine Adjust) menu? 

[georgec22]

Alright getting somewhere now: the user manual for a different Canon printer has a bit of explanatory text for the feature:

Toner Density - Enables you to adjust the toner density. This function is useful when you want to save toner, and to adjust the toner density when printing bar codes

Toner Density Fine Adjustment - Enables you to adjust the toner density by tonal range. If you select [On] and click [Details], you can adjust the toner densities of the tonal ranges [High], [Medium], and [Low] using the sliders. You can also adjust the toner densities by entering numbers.

What I gather from this info is that these settings allow you to control the density of the toner for each color on a very specific range of the image: shadows, midtones, and highlights (the "High/Medium/Low" is referring to the tonal range that will be affected, not "High density" or something like that). 

If correct, that means the shadows can have density settings separate from the midtones and highlights, and on a per-color (CMYK) basis. That would then mean you could set some very specifc calibations to get your colors just as you want them. 

You could have independent toner densities for shadows, for midtones, and for highlights, each with individial toner densities per CMYK color.