Get a pantone sample sheet from your preferred print shop and set up your monitor to mimic the colors as closely as possible.

Yep, you may just need to recalibrate your monitor.

i don print,..usually test how dark things are with a test page,.. something not too big,.... then change things upon that,..

-not sure if brand of printer matters-

id love your usual

The clean solution:
You want ICC color profiles for your printer and monitor (you may find premade ones on the driver disks or on the Internet). Feed both into your image editor, and the software will automatically compensate for the differences between the devices.

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/profiles.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_management

I wanna see, not at AC but in the future a finsihed cartoon of that post ya did of the dragon and otter girl

Oh, you know I like this one: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2167740

:)

don't know much myself, just test printing one page and see where to go from there. I do know though that there are shades of colors that are impossible to print in real life. So you will still see a slight (though probably not too noticeable) difference if your art uses alot of different colors.

If you work in RGB and convert to CMYK, you'll usually lose some brightness. Pre-convert to CMYK in Photoshop, then adjust the image until it looks like you want.

For my photographs I usually just use a levels or curves layer, and shift the blackpoint to make the overall image lighter by about four units. It varies from printer to printer, sometimes it takes some trial and error to find the correct number, but four seems to work for mine.

really i just turn up the mid or turn down the contrast... it make sthe brights brighter.. thats extremely simple and i might have it backwards but it works for me :3

I'd be glad to try printing one of your problem images for you. I've got a good color flow set up here and do a lot of printing for hire (9 different artists headed to AC used my services this year). If nothing else I could tell you what the profiles look like on my end and if they're just unnaturally dark or if it's a profiling/color-workflow problem.

I managed to get it sorted, but thanks! I may look into you next time :)

Cool, glad to help. And love the art, quite much. :)

I don't suppose you'll have a printer AT AC? I can picture that coming in handy :P

No, I'm not going this year (though my roommate Cooner is). If you have a printout you need I can send it with him as a last-second thing, no problem. I can also tube-ship to the hotel. Check out the acrylic badges he's selling. That's what we're up making right now before he heads con-wards!

No worries. I was just making my own prints and wondering what I'd do if I ran out :P