I am using Photoshop CS to edit my prints. I use the Adobe RGB 1998 as my work space, and I have calibrated my monitor using the Eye One Display meter.
When I am done with my contrast adjustments, sharpening and ready to print, my print comes out slightly darker than on my screen.
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There are three requirements to match luminance between a monitor and a print:
1: A properly profiled monitor. Assuming non-defective equipment and your ability to use it correctly, you probably have this covered. BTW, a monitor luminance/hue shift during bootup is normal. It is the monitor profile being applied. If you see nothing change, either you have a very unusual monitor that requires no color or luminance adjustments at all (highly unlikely), or else your calibration software isn't loading any profile for some reason, which is bad.
2: A properly profiled printer. Some canned printer profiles are pretty good, but properly made custom profiles are always better. But custom profiles are only valid for a particular set of driver and other printing settings. If you change anything, you can completely invalidate the profile.
3: A controlled ambient light source. This is the one everyone forgets about, but it really should be obvious. If you compare a monitor image and print in total darkness, the monitor image will always be brighter than the print. If the ambient light level is bright enough, the print will be brighter than the monitor image. If you alter the color characteristics of the ambient light, you will alter the color match between the print and monitor as well. To match luminance and hue between monitor and print, you must have a light source that is controlled in both color and intensity.
Printer profiles are always created for a given standard lighting condition, usually D50 or D65, which specifies both the intensity and the color charactics of the ambient light. Monitor profiles are created to a target luminance value and a selected color temperature. In most cases, calibrating the monitor to 6500K and creating printer profiles with D50 seems to work best to match color between printer and monitor. In your case, your ambient lighting is too dim to properly match print and monitor. Assuming your profiles are OK (and they probably are; bad profiles will usually cause color mismatch problems far worse than luminance mismatches) you have 2 options: you can lower the brightness of your monitor and reprofile it to a slightly lower luminance value, or you can increase the brightness of the ambient light you use to compare monitor image and print. The best (and of course the most expensive) solution is a print viewing booth with controlled color temperature and adjustable brightness so you can achieve a perfect match.
The advice about double color management is sound; have either Photoshop or the print driver handle the conversion from the working space to the print space, but not both. Doing so is a recipe for disaster. I generally prefer to have Photoshop handle color management, as in most cases it will do a better job than the print driver. Photoshop will convert a 16-bit image to the print space in 16-bit mode, and then downsample to 8 bits if necessary to send the data to the print driver. Letting the printer driver do the conversion means the data is downsampled to 8 bits before the color space conversion and you'll have more posterization and banding than otherwise.
