Brightness settings and Calibration on MacBook Pro

[Jack Breakfast]

Hello folks,
For those of you who do your photo work on a MacBook Pro, I'd love to ask you:
At what brightness setting do you keep your machine? Am I dead wrong to have my brightness all the way up?
I know the monitor must be calibrated as well...I figure a Spyder is the way to go?
I recently made a few giclée prints, and they looked great overall but the yellows on my magnolia warbler look a little green...I assume this is due to improper monitor calibration...the colors looked perfect on the C-Prints I made but the giclées are printing darker...perhaps that's just the way it goes and I need to lighten the file before sending it off for printing?
Can't thank you enough for any information or leads...the world of printing seems to be a whole new world of mysteries and frustrations, so I should try to give myself the best advantages possible.
Thanks again for your help!

[John Chardine]

Hi Jack- I have a Macbook Air and an Apple 27" Thunderbolt display. The displays are capable of putting out a lot of light- too much for most "normal" indoor lighting conditions. I calibrate both of the displays with the Spyder 3 Elite system and it provides a target brightness based on the ambient lighting at the time of the calibration. The usual brightness setting it calls for is about 110 candelas/square metre which works out to about 4-5 "notches" lower than maximum brightness on both displays.

[Jack Breakfast]

Thanks John...should help out with the headaches I've been getting too...thanks for that tip...I'll get a hold of the Spyder but for now I'll turn the brightness down by 5 notches...many thanks

[Roger Clark]

Check your brightness by comparing to white paper in bright sunlight. Take some paper out in the sunlight and take a meter reading, e.g. say ISO 100, f/8, what is the exposure? Now make a white image in your photo editor and fill the screen with it. Meter it too at ISO 100 and f/8. What is the exposure? It should be lower in brightness than the white paper in bright sun. Many monitors from the factory are not.

Roger

[Jack Breakfast]

Thanks again Roger, very helpful.

[Charles Glatzer]

4 notches down from the right is the norm w/o calibration.

Chas

[Jack Breakfast]

Many thanks for the info...