Tom -
This is or has been a confusing issue for many of us. You're right, though, you don't want to make visual compensations on your monitor and then hope the printer corrects for them. You want to get everything adjusted so the two devices pretty much look the same.
There is a lot of material on Norman Koren's web site that will help you get things set up with or without additional software. I used his procedures and got things as close as they need to be (for me) without buying anything.
The info you are looking for starts here <http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html> with monitor calibration. That's where you need to start. Then you can follow the link on that same page that will take you to printer calibration.
See you later, gs
