Sorry if this is out of scope for this forum, but I'm trying to calibrate my monitor prior to working with my photos in PhotoSuite Elements. I'm using the Adobe Gamma to perform this, but am not getting anywhere. The first instruction is to crank the contrast on my monitor all the way up to 100%, then adjust the brightness to a specific point (in my case, brightness had to be adjusted all the way down to around 20%. Then, as I go to set the white-point on the monitor, I'm asked to play with some controls until a blending occurs between some colored boxes and some shaded boxes embedded within the larger boxes. The problem is, I can never get the boxes to blend correctly, and when I adjust them as closely as I can, my monitor output is left looking pretty decent (colorful and crisp) but darker portions of my photos are completely shadowed. Furthermore, the monitor output bears no resemblance to my printer output, which was the whole point of the exercise. Anyone ever run into this problem? If so, how were you able to calibrate your monitor? Any help on this would be much appreciated.

P.S. The Gamma application also doesn't instruct me to modify brightness or contrast after the adjustment is done. Is 100% contrast the nominal setting for my monitor, and should it be left at this setting?