Very Dark Prints!!

Hi, I have a 24" Imac, purchased in March 2009. I have been using Aperture for about 4-months now and finally decided to have some of my images printed by a professional lab. Fortunately they offer a calibration print service for free. So I recieved the prints back today one set colour corrected and the other straight print. What i can see straight away is that the straight prints i.e. no correction are very dark compared to the image on my screen. The colour corrected images are a bit closer to what is on screen i.e lighter. \the process i am using is shooting in AdobeRGB make corrections then export the image 300DPI(requested by lab) Jpeg quality 12, Colour Space SRGB. I am running a Huey Pro calibration tool. I have read on other photographic sites that the Imac's screens are generally far too bright and i may have to use shades software to bring the brightness down to an acceptable brightness. But i am not sure if this will interfere with the Huey calibration. I guess what i am trying to do is match my screen image to my un-corrected print. I am relatively new to photography and very self critical. So any help would be much appreciated!!!

I used a 24" imac with a Huey pro and got GREAT results before upgrading to a mac pro. Prints ordered directly through aperture where identical to what I saw on screen. Costco prints needed about a 1.05 gamma adjustment in the export dialog.
When I calibrated the monitor however, I did the following:
I lowered the brightness to about 25% and I threw a dark sweatshirt over the monitor during calibration to avoid any issues with reflections. You will also want to make sure you are setting your Gamma to 2.2 instead of 1.8.
Other than that, make sure you use the histogram to confirm your exposure is correct.

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