david weaver
The same is true for some of the other stones, too. The shapton pro can be used in different conditions to cut faster or slower, or to intentionally burnish. It's a little less susceptible to being gouged than the king, but there's nothing wrong with king stones - their lack of flatness tendencies, at least in my opinion, make them a better stone for a freehand sharpener (who can control flatness with sharpening) than someone who thinks they're going to do heavy work with a guide.

I could take pictures of the edges created by various synthetics (the ones I still have), but pictures of one stone looking more coarse than another don't really tell the whole story. A soft arkansas edge has fairly large looking grooves that are less uniform than a king 800, but the actual quality of the edge is far finer and the wire edge is more organized and comes off more easily without leaving so much tooth.