I finally gave in and bought a hardware color calibrator. With four LCD monitors in the house, it was becoming impossible for me to have any confidence in the colors I was getting for photos. There are some good perceptual calibrators available: Apple ships quite a nice one built-in to MacOS X, some people prefer SuperCal for the Mac, and on Windows Powerstrip looks useful (though I’ve never used it). While software only calibration is better than no calibration, I’ve been pretty frustrated at the difference between how my photos look on various people’s screens. Now that I’m convinced that my monitors are accurately calibrated, I’m just going trust that everyone else is at least in the same ballpark.
I am trying to save up for a more complete color matching system — if anyone is interested in getting their monitor calibrated, I’m willing to hire out the existing calibrator to friends. I’m thinking about $25/weekend — it works with Windows or Mac OS 9/X; I think the Linux crowd is out of luck.