I have been ordering prints from Winkflash online and they all look darker in print than they ever do on my screen (pretty significantly) --I thought it was because paper white can't match up to the brightness of screen white, but then I saw one of the images on my mom's PC (I use an imac) and it looked closer to what I see in the prints. The most notable lately is that a dark blue couch looks black with no detail. Does anyone know if this is something to do with the mac monitor or gamma or what. I have calibrated the color and that looks good-- it seems to be just a "brightness" issue. Any help appreciated. I am trying to decide if I need to darken up my monitor to match the prints better or just edit the images until they are too light in the mids for my taste and send them in like that (hard to do).

-Kate :depressed

Are you saving your image files with an ICC Color Profile and if so which one. Many of these photo print places do not respect the color profiles in images and assume they are sRGB..
What color space do you edit in? What color management policies do you use?
What are you using to calibrate your monitor?
Regards, Murray

I have my camera set to aRGB as well as my working colorspace in PSCS...however winkflash requires sRGB so I usually resize and convert to that in a batch process. Even in sRGB they look okay on my monitor. I have been reading that apple computers have a gamma of 1.8 which is considerably brighter than the 2.2 for PC. I set my monitor gamma at 2.2 and it looks quite a bit darker. Is this how everyone else is seeing my photos? If so, then what is the point of having that 1.8 gamma and shouldn't I just set mine to 2.2 to make it more compatible with other people/machines? hmmph. I am using the apple cinema calibrator ( I am too poor for the pricier ones right now) but like I said, the color is spot on...just that everything is a little dark on the prints.

-thanks-- K