Hi Betty,

Profile prism, if your scanner is up to it, will give quite good printer profiles, for any printer. If you are careful in following the correct sequence, you will be able to prepare profiles for any paper within about ten minutes or so. I expect even if your scanner is not too brilliant, it will give better results compared to not using an ICC profile. However, you probably need to understand about colour management in general, assuming you are following that workflow.

http://www.photoshopforphotographers.com/pscs4/downloads/PSCS4-colormanage.pdf although referring to cs4, the same principles will apply to cs3 wrt colour management. Most printer manufacturers give profiles for their printers and papers, and many paper suppliers will have a free profiling service for your printer, if you buy their paper. None of that will be much use if you monitor is out of calibration, or you apply the profiles incorrectly. There are other profiling services available, but not necessarily free of charge. If you buy profile prism, you'll probably save money compared to buying three or more specific profiles.

Welcome to the can of worms

Best wishes,

Ray

There's some information in Qimage Help on how CM relates to Qimage - if I remember correctly, you a are a Q user 
Online, it's here, http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/icc.htm
Terry.

When I started out in this sort of stuff, about six years ago, there were a number of 'experts' talking about a subject that they really did not understand. I expect, today, there are many more. The only sensible route I found through the fud at that time was in the information that came with Profile Prism and was on the website at that time (not sure if the same information is there today).

Best wishes,

Ray