Canon 20D Printing

[digital cat]

I recently purchased a Canon 20D. I am having trouble getting consistent, good prints using Adobe Elements 3 even though the image looks great on the computer. I have been shooting in Raw mode. When downloaded the raw file shows highlight and shadow defects. The highlight defects (blowouts) are troublesome. I have tried under-exposing when shooting with some degree of success. I can eliminate the blowouts if I correct the exposure in raw mode (by decreasing exposure and increasing brightness), but the prints come out muddy. If I save the file as a JPEG and very dark then I can sometimes get a good print, but it is not very predictable. Can someone give me some direction?

[another view]

Hi - I moved this to the Digital Imaging forum. Are you using any color management devices (monitor calibration, etc)? I think a lot of your problems might be coming from that.

With an uncalibrated monitor, the computer tells the monitor what to display but the monitor might not be accurate. A calibration device will measure a known color (actually many colors plus white, grey and black) that it's software displays, then the device reads how that color is really displayed. It makes a profile that takes into account these differences and life is good. It's magic beyond that - but there are some good books on the subject.