I feel a bit self-conscious posting this, as over at /r/audioengineering we see an endless sea of "halp! how I make usb mic record with my m-audio interface no work confused please!!" posts and it's generally something the OP could have googled or searched on the sub before asking another duplicate question.

I've attempted to do so, and I just can't find any coherent answer or solution to fixing my unacceptable gamma.

I'm not doing this for gaming. My PC is primarily used for hobbyist photo editing work.

Previous PC I had inherited came with Pshop 7 which had Adobe Gamma Loader and it's a ballpark but good enough for a hobbyist.

It died. This PC I have the full CS3 (nice Christmas gift don't you think?) which did not come with Adobe Gamma Loader. I've tooled around the web finding eyeball it graphs to ballpark my brightness, contrast, and saturation.

It's readily apparent that my gamma is awful. My graphics are on the mobo, no fancy control panel to adjust gamma. No Adobe Gamma Loader like I'm used to. And all the pics that used to look great now just look darrrrkkk. And so does the entirety of the internet.

I've bookmarked a couple of sites that seem to offer a download that would be a gamma adjuster, but I can't make heads or tails if these places are bloatware, awesome, or malware. Bit hesitant to start installing random crap.

So, I'd be very grateful to be pointed in the right direction for correcting gamma on a Windows XP system with a 15 year old (but otherwise fine) CRT monitor.

Thanks reddit!

EDIT: a typo