I am transitioning from Painter X to Painter 11 and I'm confused on how to select the correct Color Management settings between Painter, Adobe Photoshop and my printer.
I create my art in Painter, open it in Photoshop for additional tweaks, and then print from Photoshop on my own Canon ipf5000 ("exporting" to it's plug-in profile).

When previously using Painter X, I finally got it all set up somewhat 'ok', after finding a sort of flow chart on Color Management by John Derry. But with Painter 11's new Color Management settings I've again become lost - there are so many setting choices in Painter, Photoshop and my Canon plug-in that I'm not sure I'm doing it right.

I have Win XP and calibrated my monitor. I'm using Painter 11/Service Pack 1 and Adobe 7.

One of my problems is most of the information I've read assumes the output is going to be on a CMYK printer. But I have a large format printer with 12 inks - two sets of CMYK, a photo Black, and RGB. I haven't found any information on color management settings for that range of inks. Since I never send my work out to be printed, I only need to set up my programs for my own system.

Questions:

1) With Painter X, I had my settings as Adobe RGB1998 - but recently read that I should be using sRGB instead.
-Should I switch to sRGB?
-If I change from RGB to sRGB are my prints going to look different?

2) In Painters' Color Management Settings - Color Profile Policies - Rendering Intent: Should I choose Relative Colormetric or Perceptual?
My printer plug-in suggests my output settings be set to 'Perceptual' - which I did while using Painter X with good results. But now I've read that for Painter 11, I should use Relative Colormetric. When using Painter X, setting the printer profile output to Relative Colormetric made my prints way too saturated.

3) In Painter's Color Proofing Settings - Should I set it to match whatever Rendering Intent I chose for Color Profile Policies? Is there any reason to choose a different setting here?

4) When I have an image open in Painter 11, the color management icon is always 'on'. If I turn it off and save the image, it still comes back on when I reopen the image. I don't remember that happening before in Painter X - is it a glitch or is there some way to keep it turned off until I select it to be on?

5) In Adobe PS - Color Management Policies - it lists RGB, CMYK and Grey and asks to choose to "Preserve embedded profile", "Convert" or "Off" - which do I choose?

6) Adobe PS - under "Conversion Options" - Intent, Again I need to know if I should select "Relative Colormetric" or "Perceptual"?

7) In Adobe it has a choice of "engine" as Adobe ACE or Microsoft ICM - but in Painter 11 there was neither of these choices, it just listed Windows something - are they supposed to be different? Which do I choose in Adobe since I apparently don't get a choice in Painter?

8) Also in Adobe's settings - do I 'Use Black Point' and 'Use Dither'?

9) Will these settings make my art display correctly on my website, or do I have to do something else entirely to adjust for that?

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I thought I'd take a chance that someone out there can help me work through these settings.

Thanks in advance!