Laptop calabration

[vegas9798]

 First of all let me say that I got what you might call a Late start in the computer world so please bear with me if I may ask some pretty elementary questions and seem a bit lost. Having said this I would appreciate any help that could be offered concerning ONE of the problems I am having . Todays problem deals with the fact that I have invested a good amount of money in a digital SLR camera , a copy of Photoshop Elements 7, 1 DVD to learn how to work PSE7, one very large manual ,to learn how to work PSE7, yet another DVD tutorial on.....you guessed it ,how to work PSE7. I thought I was finally making some progress and then I saw what the photos that I was sending out to my friends actually looked like when they arrived in their mailboxes. Couldn't understand it the very same picture looks like a perfect picture postcard on my laptop ,so I asked and was told that I might need to calibrate my LCD monitor so I googled this and after browsing through two pages of sites with people looking for the same info it seems that a laptop can't be changed . So this brings me to my main question..... what good is a photo editing program if you have no idea what your photo will look like on the persons screen you're sending it to ?

[ghaldos]

That's like saying what good is a webpage if it isn't going to look the same on all computers and in all browsers there are so many things that make the color different it could be the type of gloss or matte they used on the lcd, quality of the lcd, color profile etc. I have no idea what's going on with the photos but I'm assuming that there is a problem with the color difference between the computers and I'm not sure where you are reading that you cannot change the color profile of an lcd screen but you can, it's controlled by the operating system and not the monitor. This would also not work as the person you are sending to would have to have it set up the same way as yours and even then unless you have the exact same monitor it's going to look different there's no way of getting around it.

The main point of having a photo editing program is mainly for printing in which case you can set up a color calibration for your prints to look like what is on screen, of course this is dependant on the quality of your printer, ink and paper as well.

[vegas9798]

 Thanks for your input Ghaldos.

 Any suggestions concerning which brand or model of photo printer you have found to perform well ?