Photography

To start, I'm mostly just a hobbyist (I mean I have a website with a store but no traffic and I don't really bother to advertise, but that's not the topic for today), so I don't print often and mostly share my photos online. I use my laptop, which like most devices has a pretty bright screen. I usually then double-check images on my phone screen, which is a little darker and shows colors a little differently so that I can have an idea of how my images look on two different screens.

But anyways, I'm planning to print a few calendars soon and recently got a stack of 4x6s printed off just for fun. I noticed that most of my images were darker in print than online. I've now read that this is common and makes sense, as the screens are backlit to be very bright. But I guess I'm wondering about the best way to "fix" images for print, and if there's any good way to know that they'll look right before actually printing. I know about calibrators, probably should get one, etc etc but honestly was hoping to print the calendars with a black Friday deal so I'm not going to have a calibrator before then.

Should I simply just up the exposure settings? Any tips on what's a good amount? Do other settings need to be adjusted for print, too?

Also just wondering how other people manage this in general. I'd probably still prefer to edit for screens in the future, as that is primarily how I share my photos. So should I just keep two versions of photos that I want to print? Or adjust my whole editing style to be a bit brighter (which tbh I didn't think it was very dark to begin with) in case I print something?

As I said, I don't print often, so this is a new issue for me that I hadn't thought much about before. I'd like to print more in the future and am just curious about others' thoughts, editing processes, and any tips on not running into this issue next time.