Originally posted by emalvick If you can't get a calibrator just yet, why don't you adjust your monitor to match the prints you have?
I used to do this in the past because I wasn't aware of calibrators and I wanted to be sure what I was seeing was what I was going to get back from a printer. Thus I figured if I printed an image and then adjusted the monitor so the image on the monitor roughly matched the printed image, then I would be happy with the results, and I was (there are always exceptions or challenging shots that will give problems).
This is obviously not an exact way to do it, but it gets you much closer than no calibration at all.
That's an interesting way to look at it....makes sense too. I've been lucky with my prints done at Costco looking exactly like my monitor (a relatively cheap Acer widescreen LCD).