The profile is "keyed" to an OEM paper that is contained in the printer manufacturer's driver data base. When a paper company, or a service provider or yourself make a custom profile for the paper you will be using, it needs to be "keyed" off of some paper in the driver data base, otherwise the printer wouldn't know how to handle it - this affects how ink gets laid down on paper. So for example, when I make a profile for Ilford Gold Cotton Textured for my Epson 4900, Ilford recommends that I key it off of Epson's Textured Fine Art Paper setting in the Epson driver. When i go to print with that profile, I need to select Epson Fine Art Textured in the Epson driver set-up, so the driver and the profile are in sync. The profile is only as useful as you maintain consistency between the parameters in which you created the profile and the parameters in which you make the print.