ICC Profiles and Different Brand Paper to Printer

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I bought a Canon Pixma MG5250 all in one on the weekend, pretty much the same spec as any other Pixma standalone printer but with a scanner and printer.

Now im using a Snow Leaopard on an iMac and lightroom 3 to print but im gettin confused at the colour profiles to select.

Am i right in saying that the Canon MG5250 profiles with PT1 PT2 etc.. are specific to a grade of Canon paper and not neccesarily to any other paper?

For for arguments sake if i was using glossy paper from HP what profile would i have to select?

I done a test print on glossy paper using the ColorMatch RGB and it actually came out pretty good but it looks like that's a display profile and not a printer profile. Do i stick with canon installed profiles or something else when i cant find the paper/printer specific profile?

Thanks.
 
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Do you like the print that you have printed? if the answer is yes then don't over complicate things.

Joan
 
Good point. I thought the print was pretty good to be honest yeah. I tried one of the canon profiles for photo paper plus II glossy which came out even closer to what was on screen.

Is there a generic profile for non specific paper i can use? There is one called... Canon IJ Color Printer Profile 2005 which i might try.

Ive actaully got HP photo advanced glossy paper as it was the only thing i could get at short notice but i cant find a profile for it at all.
 
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I have a canon inkjet, and I just use the canon profile most similar to the paper that's being printed on. It's not quite as perfect as for canon paper, but close enough for most applications.
 
Profiles are Printer/paper/ink specific, so you can't really use canon paper profiles with HP or other papers. It's not unusual for printer manufacturers to provide only profiles for their machines and papers. Independent paper manufacturers, such as Ilford etc will often have generic profiles for there products on a range of printers.

There is no generic profile that will work with all all printers and papers. you need ones that are specific to your paper/ink/paper set up.

ColourMatch RGB is a colour space profile, and it's the gamut of the Radius ColourMatch monitor. (one the original quality colour monitors), and is not really an output profile.

You may be better off looking as say one of the Ilford papers and downloading a generic profile for from the Ilford web site.

One other point to bear in mind is that there is a disconnect between your monitor and the printer even when using profiles. Your monitor represents the colours you see within it's own colour space. The printer will have it's own characteristics and these are not reflected on your monitor hence you may seem some discrepancies. The way round this is to soft proof the image. This emulates how the printer will reproduce the colours, on your monitor. As yet Lightroom doesn't support soft proofing. If you want to do this you need to do it in Photoshop.

Sounds a bit complicated but it isn't really. Rather than go through it all here simply look up Soft Proofing in Photoshop.

Another point is that I have found Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl and Gold Fibre Silk print very close to the screen image when using a profiled system.( Not soft proofed ) Now this is using Epson printers, so I can't say how close they are with Canon, but it's worth a try
 
MP = Matte Photo Paper
PR = Photo Paper Pro
SP = Photo Paper Plus Glossy
GL = Photo Paper Plus Glossy II
SG = Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss

the numbers refer to the print quality 1 being the highest
 
Some excellent information there people, thanks very much for that. I realised after doing some reading that I used a display profile for printing. I tried finding a HP paper profile with no luck at all, no surprises there from a manufacture that makes the paper and printers.

Chappers, you mention Ilford Pearl, and spotted this... http://www.photopaperdirect.com/pro...-Plus-Pearl-Photo-Paper-270g-Pack-Of-100.html Good deal?

I know ilford do an ICC profile for this paper and printer.
 
To be honest I've never used this paper. I tend to use the ones I mentioned plus Hahnnemuhle Fine Art Pearl.

It looks as though they do some reasonably priced smaller sizes.Get some and try it. Don't buy loads of a new paper as you may not like it and end up with a large amount of a paper you don't like..

Just one suggestion, once you find a paper you like stick to it. You don't want to be always changing from one to another.

The Ilford Gold Fibre Silk is very similar to the Hanhamuhle product ( and is a bit cheaper ) I tend to stick to these plus the other Ilford paper .By all means try others but have one you can always reference too. If you then find one you prefer then use that and use that as a reference
 
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