Laptop Screen and color in printed photos - don't match... prints come back darker.

I'm a digital scrapbooker & ran into the problem of having it look great on my laptop screen but then the prints were darker and the skin tones of my subjects, had a red tint to them. (Which I hated) The overall photo itself came out good, but I lost a lot of detail, due to the "darkness". I have all my prints done in a Matte finish, which makes the details pop off the paper and less 1 dimensional, as when printed in glossy. I made a great discovery though, so hopefully this will help some of you out.  I spent an entire night goggling the subject and looking for info on my laptop and finally fixed the problem.  Yipee for me!

From what I learned, most laptops/monitors use a sRGB color profile, which is standard when it comes to printing. Depending on what program you use to edit your photos, they too allow you to calibrate the monitor and offer a color management setting. You can also upload a color profile from which ever place you print from. But I found a solution for myself.

Under control panel click on> ADJUST SCREEN RESOLUTION.  A box should pop up saying - "Display setting> Monitor" You'll then see 2 boxes, one labeled with the number 1 and another Number 2. You'll also see a button that says -"ADVANCE SETTINGS". Click on that and another screen pops up saying - " Genetic Pnp Monitor & Moble Intel" or whichever one that your laptop uses. [I have a Tosiba laptop] There are 5 tabs- "Intel(R)Graphic Media Accelerator Driver for Moble/ Adapter / Monitor / Troubleshoot / Color management. Click on > INTEL(R) GRAPHIC MEDIA ACCELERATOR DRIVER FOR MOBILE... then click on> GRAPHIC PROPERTIES. Another box pops up saying "NOTEBOOK" and has 4 tabs - "Display Devices / Display settings / Color Correction / Hot keys" . Click on > COLOR CORRECTION. A screen pops up with sliders to adjust : GAMMA / BRIGHTNESS/ AND CONTRAST.

I then opened up a photo in my Corel PaintShopPro Program, clicked on the small box at the bottom of my screen, which made the Color Correct box pop up on top of the photo and I was able to adjust the overall brightness, comparing it to the same photo that I had printed out, which was too dark.

So now when I use my program to edit photos and have them sent to CVS to be printed, what I see on my screen is exactly what they get in their color profile. Problem solved.... at least for me. Now I no longer have to keep fiddling with the "Adjust Display Brightness" every time I turn on my laptop. And not to worry, there's a - "RESTORE TO DEFAULT" button on the last screen if you get scared or are unsure.

As for the red tint - I just adjust it in my program. I click ADJUST> COLOR>RED/GREEN/BLUE. Which allows me to lower the red tones in my photos.   

I hope you've found this info. to be helpful.  Thanks for stopping by and please let me know if this fixes the problem for you too.