First of all, check the color temperature of your monitor. Almost all (but the most expensive intended-for-professional-graphics-work) monitors ship with a color temp of 9300K. This is becuase it looks good in a typical overlit, fluorescent-lit retail store. If you drop your color temp to a more correct/appropriate/calibrated/typical daylight 6500K, you'll have the "dark" problem relative to everyone else. But just 'cos everyone else has succumbed to monitor vendors' Marketing Dept., doesn't make it right ;-) Same effect can be seen with TVs. The typical settings out-of-the-box is way to bright for a low-light residential setting. A useful by-product of this 6500K setting on a CRT is longer useful life of the phosphor :-) Also remember too that Macs and PCs have different gammas, so anything created on a Mac is going to look dark on a PC even if the color temps are the same and even if they are similarly calibrated. Lots of viewer apps will let you change the gamma for a given picture.