barfl2 said:
crenedecotret my post 11 was also in perceptual and I was very pleased with it. My point was that despite the huge mileages and different monitors etc my visual perception of these pictures was similar and not poles apart to what you and Emulatoro saw. I think the Quick Loader utility is very useful and it loads up every time you switch on and sets the monitor Gamma to your selected one. I use 2.2 although Macs are usually set lower.
My pension will not stretch to monitor profiling hardware and my output is quite low and the downloads of good test images and tests of all my various papers have proved very rewarding.
Some monitors are better than other out of the box . You were lucky to get one of the good ones

My last two monitors were absolutely terrible without calibration. That being said, the quick Gamma app is certainly much, much better option than not using anything at all.
I started out the wrong way... bad monitor... ebay CIS on an epson with dubious quality inks. Everything was way, way off, I remember what should have been flesh tones was greenish, like being real sick or from mars. Prints were always too dark, or too light. I couldn't get good prints and was wasting a ton of ink and paper with adjustments that worked well with some shots, and no so good with others. After a couple of months, I got frustrated and was about to give up on 3rd party inks. I think the main point about profiles and calibration is that everything becomes controlled and predictable. No more wasted ink/paper and no surprises.
I got the Spyder2 for a very low price and originally did my profiles with Profile Prism (80$) which I still think is a great product, except maybe that the profiles aren't perfectly neutral with black and white. I think overall everything had set me back maybe 150$ or so, which at the time was not bad at all. Got those around 2007 and they've served me quite well. Honestly, I wanted to do some black and white printing, so that let me to the Colormunki purchase. I could have gotten a couple of custom profiles, but I got used to DIY and it will serve me for years. My Spyder2 ended up on ebay this week and sold for 20$ or so, i'm hoping whoever got it is someone from Nifty Stuff
So now when someones asks, I generally recommend to calibrate the monitor by any means possible.. can be free with something like Quick Gamma, then get a printer profile. Can be a custom profile for a specific paper for 25$ or so, or inexpensive if not as precise with a scanner-based paper profile. All you need for that is a 20$ IT8 target from Wolf Faust and Argyll, which is free.
mrelmo didn't have a bad idea at all.. get a print from a Lab, then adjust the monitor and printer to match.
Oh, to everyone..... Calibrating/Profiling is not necessary for EVERYONE. But if you're having a hard time, it's worth looking into seriously