Purchase a profile for your type of printer and paper. This is usually the easiest and least expensive method.

Purchase a profile for your specific printer and paper. This method involves printing a profiling target on your printer and paper, and providing that target to a company that will create a specific profile. This is more expensive than purchasing a standard profile, but can provide better results because it compensates for any manufacturing variations in printers.

Create your own profile using a scanner-based system. This method involves using profile-creation software and your own flatbed scanner to scan the profiling target. It can provide excellent results for matte surface papers, but not glossy papers. (Glossy papers tend to have fluorescent brighteners in them that look different to a scanner than they do in room light.)

Create your own profile using a hardware profile-creation tool. This method is expensive but can provide the best results. A good hardware tool can create an accurate profile even with glossy papers.

Tweak a profile created using one of the previous methods with profile-editing software. This software can be complex to use, but it lets you correct problems with a profile or simply adjust a profile to produce results more to your taste.