Canon Pixma ICC profiles codes hell

I hardly ever blog but when I am looking for information and get frustrated by the search, I post an item after finding information .. Today, the item is about Canon ICC profiles when printing (in my case from Lightroom) ..

I bought a second printer, to use as less expensive solution next to my 9500 Pro - the Pixma IP4700 (apparently the IP4600 is quite similar) .. So, I wanted to make a test print from Lightroom and the moment I opened the Print tab, I realised it would be hell to find the correct ICC profile for the paper .. I wanted to make a test print on the 10x15 (4"x6") "Photo Paper Plus Glossy II" (yep, that's the name of the paper) a.k.a. PP-201, that Canon delivered with the printer ..

The pp-201 is newer paper, apparently so the info I could find about profiles was not useful, since the ICC profiles I could choose from Lightroom did not seem to resemble what I was looking for ..

I happened to find the best amount of info after searching for the codes (MP2, PR1, GL3, PT2, SG2, SP1, etc etc etc) .. info that was useful for me were these ..

MP = Matte Photo Paper
PR = Photo Paper Pro
SP = Photo Paper Plus Glossy (PP-101)
GL = Photo Paper Plus Glossy II (PP-201)
SG = Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss
PT = Photo Paper Pro Platinum

These codes are followed by a number, which indicates the quality .. 3 is lower than 1 and it resembles the number above the slider in the software driver under print quality ..

Luckily I usually print on Ilford Galerie (professional inkjet photo range) Smooth Pearl paper .. Ilford is so sweet to help you find the correct profile for their particular type of paper for your particular printer .. Unfortunately the IP4700 was not listed yet (not a surprise since the printer is quite new and I can not find it in the Dutch Canon's paper-choise list itself!) - so I guess I will go for the IP4600 ICC profile .. The nice thing about the Ilford ICC profiles is that they come with a PDF file, which are instructions for the correct printer settings for your printer .. yay!

More on Canon ICC (IP4500) here at Dave Bartrum's blog
Find Canon paper/printer combination info here
Also the Canon ICC Profile guide is a useful source of information but it needs an update for their newer papers
I haven't read any of these but at a glance, these tutorials on printing from Adobe (Photoshop, Lightroom) seems quite helpful, if you are not custom to printing with color callibration and color management ..

Whenever I find more on this, I'll add it to this article .. any extra information is helpful!