This comment is way off base:
The screen of your (likely) $2000 machine that's professionally calibrated by a series of tests to make sure it meets the best standards for professional photographers is "too bright"
I don't want to make the $9 an hour staff at Walmart sound like experts, but they are probably right.
I print fine art reproductions for a living. Usually, I use a mid 2010 MBP, which has a screen that is probably less bright than yours. If I relied only on the Mac OS "Displays" calibration tool, there is no chance that I could get reliable prints, from Walmart, or from our company's calibrated sixty inch printers.
The "professionally calibrated" screen that the commenter mentioned was calibrated, to be, well, bright. Bright screens look really good in a brightly lit room. Nothing wrong with twiddling with your photos with the screen turned up all the way, but when it's time to do the final adjustments to the image for printing, it's essential to use a calibrated screen.
"Calibrated" doesn't mean using the "Displays" preference pane. It means using an external hardware colorimeter and profiling software. In the middle of the profiling process, the colorimeter software will tell you that your screen needs to be adjusted down to about 120 candelas per sq meter.
Here's the word from the experts at
X-Rite
Luminance
The luminance of your display/monitor determines the brightness. Modern displays are capable of 200-300 cd/m2 (candelas per square meter) which is very bright, while older displays may struggle to achieve 100 cd/m2.
Choose a luminance level that provides you with comfortable viewing in your standard working conditions. For working in lower ambient light conditions, reducing the brightness of your display may provide more comfortable viewing.
If working in brighter conditions, or when matching your display to a controlled lighting condition, higher luminance is recommended.
120 cd/m2 is a recommended general-purpose setting. Select from any of the predefined settings, or choose your own custom luminance value to optimize your display for your specific viewing conditions.
After my most recent profiling (you have to do it about once a month in a pro setting), I can tell you that using the calibrated monitor profile makes everything look about half as bright as it does with the default system monitor profile. On top of that, if I want to get the brightness down to the 120 candelas setting, I need to turn the screen brightness WAY down from the brightest setting.
The setting that works for me is to use the custom profile (with its 50% apparent reduction in brightness) and keep the screen set three clicks down from its brightest setting, and then I set Photoshop to print at 10% brighter than whatever I see on the screen. After all that, I get 100% accurate matching between what I see and what the printer produces, no matter if I produce the prints or if I send them out to another pro lab with calibrated equipment.