Dump the Canon scanning software and use Vuescan - recommended for Canon scanners with Profile prism. PP Help gives recommended settings for Vuescan.
http://www.hamrick.com/
It'll be another $80 for the Pro version but you wont regret spending the money, it's the best scanning software out there with free upgrades for life - sound familiar 

I hate to say this in the PP section, but there is: X-Rite ColorMunki Photo, about $350 on US Amazon.
PP is still a bargain 

Terry

Yes, I understood that but I misunderstood the fact that you do not already have Profile Prism, am I right there?
Back to original problem, poor colours from a Canon printer, with Lightroom.
I know nothing about setting up LR for colour management (a different story for the best printing program: Qimage   ) but are you sure all the settings in LR and the driver are correct and match the requirements of the profile? By requirements, I mean things like (Epson speak) ICM, No Colour Adjustment in the driver and the correct paper type selected. Is your monitor calibrated and therefore has an associated icc profile? All basic stuff I know but ....
Tell us which printer model it is, there are probably other owners here; also what paper and who's profile are you using? In what way are the colours off?
Terry.

That all sounds good. If you are using a Canon profile with a Canon printer with Canon inks there should not be a problem.
You did not say whether you are using genuine Canon inks, if not, that's likely to be the problem.
If you are, check the nozzles are clean and not blocked, run a check to be sure.
Other than that, I've no more ideas.
Terry.

Hi Francois,

A few years ago I bought a colour laser printer - OKI c5400. I spent a number of days emailing images to and fro to their tech  support - I and they knew nothing about colour management. I bought profile prism, it took me a couple of hours to understand what all this icc stuff was about, and then applied it to the printer. Astounding results. I have used it to profile any brand of paper, or inks, on any printer I own. It takes just a few minutes (but wait a day for the ink to 'mature'), and the resulting profile is easily edited if needed. I use a pretty cheap epson scanner, without vuescan, my previous better model was not supported in windoze xp. If you get pp, try it and see. If the canon scanning software does not work well, get Vuescan, as others recommend. I think, provided you have some control over the basic scanning operation, and the illumination is even enough, you will get it to work good enough for your requirements.

Now, it may seem a low cost solution, but in truth, the others are ripping off the gullible public. (Or put it another way, their financial model is different than Mike's.)

btw, I get no commission, but I have recommended pp to everyone who has a problem similar to yours, and it has always produced a good result.

Best wishes,

Ray

IrfanView, and other image viewers are not colour managed and foc. Using IV can run the scanner (if a twain device) and save the image as a tif which profile prism recognises, and use it to print too. (Faststone tifs do not seem to be recognised by profile prism/qimage, at least for me)

Best wishes,

Ray

Let me jump in here with my two cents worth. I use both Profile Prism and Qimage Studio.

First - although I am not familiar with Lightroom I am also surprised that you are getting poor results with Canon ink, Canon paper and the canned Canon profiles. Sounds like double profiling to me although you said you had it set up correctly. You should really try Qimage for printing - it is so easy to select a profile and get good prints. I also have Photoshop Elements for complex photo editing, but my prints from it using the same profile as I use in Qimage never come out quite the same. Am sure it is the settings I am using in PE but I am not sure what I set wrong. So - I edit in PE and print from Qimage.

Second - Profile Prism. I have both a Canon LiDE 60 and more recently a LiDE 200. Until a week or so ago I used the CanoScan software that came with the scanners with fairly good results especially with glossy papers. I use third party inks (Image Specialists dye based) and Costco Kirkland Glossy Photo and Staples Matte papers with my Canon ip4500 printer. When Mike hosted this forum on Yahoo there was a File that described how to use CanoScan SW with PP to get 48 bit scans and obtain profiles. Don't know if those files from Yahoo are available here - maybe Mike can tell us. It was a complex method of different settings and scans and answering yes or no to the "linear (gamma 1.0) image" question, but it worked and I got good profiles on glossy paper. Not so good with matte papers. Just started using VueScan Pro and what a difference in ease. Using the LiDE 200 with scan passes set to 4, Color to None, and output Raw I get very few (3 to 5) X's on both the Prism target and Printer target analysis and almost perfect profiles. Only adjustment I make in VueScan is adjusting brightness to correct dark or bright X's. The profiles come out very good for both glossy and matte papers. The only adjustment I made on the glossy paper profile was a slight increase in brightness. Colors on the prints I have made are good and the gray scale is correct with no color tint to the grays.

Just wanted to state my experience with Qimage and PP. Also just bought new IT8. 7/2 targets from Wolf Faust (coloraid.de). My original target was over four years old and Faust recommends new ones every two years. Guess I could have gotten a new one from Mike, but I wanted to try both the Fuji paper and Kodak paper targets Faust offers.

Steve W.

Hello Francois, you are from Canada aren't you?

I honestly wouldn't mind printing one picture without a profile and one with a profile I made with Prism and a Canon LIDE60 scanner.
It'll probably just cost me a loonie to send them off by mail.

I don't know what kind of setup you have, but here is mine:
Printers:
Epson R220 now used by my wife, with Image Specialists ink
Canon IP4500 used by myself, with Hobbicolors Ink.
Papers used:
Costco Glossy, Staples double sided matte.
Scanner: Canon LIDE 60, used with Canon original software. I downloaded Vuescan
trial, saw no improvement. Try your Canon software before you spend anything
else....

I've profiled both papers on both printers and everything matches up pretty close.
(of course there will be difference between matte and glossy papers).

Before the profiling, my R220 used to have a slight green tint and the ip4500
had a reddish tint.

I'm in the process of re profiling my IP4500 now, because i've switched from
Windows to Linux. Now this might be a plus for you or not, but PP works fine under
Linux using WINE emulation. I had no problem re-profiling my scanner with the
open source XSane driver.

Overall, I'm verry happy with the purchase I did a couple of years ago! It saved me a
ton of money (I can use whatever ink/paper combo I want). And, on my system, with
my printers, there was a noticeable improvement vs the manufacturer's profiles.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I also calibrated my screen with a Spyder2, so we have pretty
close setups, except for (recently) my major OS/driver switch