On 18/12/2019 14:28, Mike Halmarack wrote:
My daughter sends me photos from her camera and I try to optimise them
for photoprinting. I often find that the final photos end up too dark,
even when I tweak my computer monitor brightness.

Sounds like you haven't got gamma matched on the monitor and printer.

I know I can buy additional equipment to help with this, though I'm
not keen to.

There should be a setting in the photo application that shows a mid tone
and a corresponding chequerboard of full on pixels and black. You adjust
that to match and then with any luck your images will be consistent
across all output media.

In Paintshop Pro it is under File Colour Management/Calibrate Monitor

I think the free evaluation copy will let you do this too.

Would printing the files on an inkjet printer provide adequate
examples of how the photoprint will ultimately come out?

Once you have a calibrated system then it should all just work. There
are always minor differences since CMYK print media cannot handle
anything like the contrast ratio that an RGB emitting display can.

The only time I had trouble was with a particular version of Jessops
digital print software which could not handle pure monochrome JPEGs at
all and colourised them in a most peculiar way in the final print even
though they previewed perfectly on the console application.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown