Prior to the TMax revolution, it seems every Kodak b&w sheet film I tried had a decent retouching tooth. Just the newcomers like Tech Pan were slick. HP5 went through at least three reiterations, only one of them officially indicated - the shift from HP5 to HP5-plus; it had a sorta tooth to it.

I really don't like a spray-on retouch surface. Nasty stuff. I'd rather do any retouching on a registered sheet of frosted mylar. I don't do much film retouching anyway, at least in relation to general black and white work. In relation to color film masking, I did quite a bit of it.

Red creosin dye works well on a larger range of sheet film base than pencil smudge.