Profiles, labs, soft-proofing and printing

I contacted MPIX.com, a popular lab, about whether they had printer profiles. I received a couple of .ICM files, one for their metallic paper, one for the E-surface paper.

I'm a little unclear whether I can use these as Destination ICC's or not. MPIX says to use them for soft-proofing, and to provide files in sRGB color space. They say nothing about embedding their profiles in the image files. Here are their words:

"Because each order can be viewed by a different technician we have no way to match colors from order to order or how they may appear on your monitor. The only way to accomplish this is to be calibrated to our printers and select the 'no color corrections' option located in the 'order summary' were files are sent directly to the printer without any adjustments."

I asked for clarification, and they said, "This means that you have the option to select "Do Not Color Correct" and they should turn out fine as long as you have been calibrated to our printers."

They also provided a PDF document showing how to set up soft-proofing in Photoshop. To summarize, soft-proofing is done using their .ICM. After adjustments have been made, the file is output in sRGB space, and sent over to the lab with a request to have color correction turned off. If there are no fumbles, the results should some close to what was seen onscreen (assuming profiled monitor, etc.).

Last week, in "How does CO use profiles for display?", Keith described what he called "pseudo" proofing in CO wherein the destination printer profile is used as the working space, and as long as that same profile is used for destination (web or proof), and the working space set back to something generic like AdobeRGB, the processed images should also give a fellow a fighting change of getting prints that come close to what was on the monitor.

QUESTION ONE:

So to send to MPIX, I would use their profile as the working space and the destination space, switch to sRGB for working, then process the files? Or does it matter whether I use AdobeRGB or sRGB for working prior to outputting?

QUESTION TWO:

Now how about printing to a printer? I have an R2400, and use Qimage for printing. Qimage is color-managed. It seems like I can take one of two approaches:

1. Pseudo soft-profile in CO as described, using the R2400's profile for working and destination, then tell Qimage to send the file to the printer using that same profile. Seems like that would result in double-profiling.

Or,

2. Use AdobeRGB (or similar vanilla-flavored) as working and destination space in CO, then let Qimage send the file to the printer using the printer profile.

I realize that Qimage is outside the specific scope of this forum, but since CO is not a print program, advice on how to manage color within CO for best results with a standalone print program would be helpful.

-- mike elliott