Printing in LR - poor color reproduction

Question

Photos I print in LR's printing module with a Canon Pixma MP800R and using Canon PP-101 paper and Canon ink, turn out in a kind of brownish/faded color and are totally different from the photos on the screen. I use 'Managed by printer' and 'perceptual'
I noticed that the advise is that "When selecting 'managed by printer' remember to enable color management in the printer driver dialog box". Where do I find this dialog box?
Perhaps not knowing how to enable color management causes the bad color reproduction?
Thanks for advise!

Answer 1

You need to choose a specific print profile (probably called something like "canon mp800r pr1" - this is what canon calls it's profile for your printer (canon mp800r) and that paper(pr is code for photo paper pro) at highest quality(1) (see the steves digicam link below for further info). This will have been loaded with the printer driver). Select it by picking "other" from the dropdown list of profiles in the print module in lightroom and you should be presented with a list with your profiles in(canon mp800r mp1, canon mp800r pr1 etc). If they are not there, your printer driver may not have been installed properly)
You must then disable the printer profile in the colour/intensity section of the printer settings dialog (press "print settings..." in lighroom then "properties" next to the drop down list with the name of your printer in it. Then select the "manual" radio button in the colour/intensity bit of this dialog and press the set button in the same section of this dialog).
I have found it helpful with some papers to set the print quality manually in the same dialog (select "custom" radio button and then press the "set" button in the same section of the dialog) to high(1) and the halftoning to diffusion.
If you have not already done it, make sure you choose the correct type of paper from the drop down list - for canon papers this will be obvious. For non-canon papers you will need to either look at the package for information or go to the manufacturers website - eg kodak ultima paper and ilford galarie classic pearl recommend the canon photopaper pro setting in my mp600 - this may vary with yours)
Once you have done all this, make sure to save a print preset with the name of the paper so you can easily go back to this combination of settings if you need to in the future. Do this by pressing the "add" button in lightroom when you are in the print module (bottom left of screen) - It is great, lightroom remembers all the settings that you have changed. If you decide these settings are not right for the paper then you can create a new preset or right click on the name of your preset and choose "update with current settings". To me, after using elements for a long time, these presets seem like a real step in a professional direction to help you ensure consistency of quality in printing.
Also, on some papers such as kodak ultima, you have to set the brightness to light in the colour/intensity section also (again this might be different for your printer so chack the paper manufacturers websites) - i figured this one out after spending half an hour digging around the kodak website to find the recommended printer settings. Some companies (eg ilford and kodak for their professional papers) have specific colour profiles for download to colourmatch your printer and paper.
NB - I can offer no guarantees, but this works for me with an MP600 and vista. I am not any sort of expert, just an enthusiastic amateur who spent a long time trying to resolve these issues using a combination of this forum and lots of web serching. I found this article on steves digicams site very helpful:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/June_2005.html
Also lightroom 1.1 is known to have printing colour reproduction problems with vista if you use the "managed by printer" setting - it is in the readme and recommends that specific printer profiles are selected - as I suggest above.