APPLE USERS PLEASE HELP! (Color Calibration)

[Jaen_Paul]

PC Users are welcome too. I just switched everything to Mac and am going through the growing pains. I used the colorsync software that came withy the Mac for my color and brightness calibration, picked up the prints and they all look like sh*t. Under exposed, really contrasty and no shadow details. But they look great in photoshop. I'm using the sRGB colorspace because that is what my lab told me to use. Should I use a preset color space on my monitor? (Adobe 1998, sRGB, Apple Color, etc) I just don't know what to do. I purchased a Colorvision Spyder. After it goes through it's process it asks me to save new ICC Profile and after I hit "save" it says "Profile not saved...error" and the program shuts off. The one time it did let me save the profile the whole screen was purple. Also, the color on my lab top and cinema display don't match. Any help would be great, web sites I could read and the like. I've attached a self portrait. The background should be Candy Apple Red or close to it. That's what it looks like on my Cinema Display. Please let me know.

Thank you all so much

JP