I take it that you are not a DTP graphic designer or someone who is into computer stuff.
You are chasing something that can never be done perfectly. You need to understand some basic photo production work, digital and film printing and how difference print equipment works and produces colours for printing.
To put it simply, what your Canon or Epson colour bubble jet printer prints in terms of colour richness, contrast and resolution, can never be fully reproduce faithful by another print medium technology. You can try to get as close to the colour range but never exactly. That is the "Holy Grail" of colour reproduction compatibility. The photo shops will take your negative or digital file to produce the prints on photo paper or some colour dye print system. Whatever brand of photo paper or ink dye system used to produce 3R or 4R..etc will have roughly about the same general colour range and tolerance plus maybe abit more, give or take, depending on the brand and price you pay. You will notice that those photo picture usually don't produce POP COLOURS like shocking pink or florescent green well. Stark bright POP colours for example usually come out more muted or less "lively". Some brand of photo prints ( same goes for various type of DSLRs too) gives better red or green or blue..etc. With your computer bubble jet printer...POP colours are alot easier to product becasue of their ink jet colour system. This is becasue your printer approached the printing of colours and resolution very difference from a photo shop's printing machine that process and develop your prints.
In recent years there might have been some big advances in colour reproduction work but it is still very far from being perfect. Just look at Canon and Nikon. Till today, they will not agree to use one standard RAW file format. Everyone wants to have their own propriety format for the sake of gaining market share. This just makes matters worst when you consider this competition is not just about camera makers but also film makers, reproduction equipment...etc.
Even now, what you see on your PC will not come out 100% right with your bubble jet printouts. This is because the colour produce on your PC's monitor is illuminating the colours by a cathode light tube from the back and into your eyes. A piece of paper does not have light shining from the back to bring out the colour to the front and into your eyes so we see that as less brilliant. So we compensate in a way by shining a light on the paper or viewing it in a illuminate area. There's also the matter of choice of paper used for your bubble jet printing. If you buy a Epson printer and use normal photocopy paper to print..the print is usually very average slightly fuzzy print and the colours are dull. But if you use a special buble jet paper from Epson to do the print again, this time the colours look very vivid and brighter.Lines are sharp since the paper is fast drying and does not let the ink blot. BUT..use another generic brand of bubble jet paper and you still might get another slightly difference colour cast or quality of prints. If you think that is hard to digest wait till you becoming a designer like myself or decide to dive alot deeper into doing more reproduction work in your photographic hobby.
Every project is a challenge in itself. If you are using various mix media to compose and produce one finish creative image and it then have to be replicated and output into various media like magazine, newspaper, brochure on fancy paper, light box transprencies, video, film...etc...then you will know what a true headache from hell feels like heheh...
For example, if you do a newspaper ad in full colour..the colour separation had to be adjusted for the bias off-white paper which can cause certain lighter colours to change slightly. And in cases where certain colours can't be produce accurately ( a very touchy problem especially if it is a company's corporate logo colour) by a particular medium's colour range (e.g offset 4 colour printing) then you might need to spend addition cost to add a special colour to it. (5 colour printing instead of 4) The list of incompatibility issues is a long one to say the least.
Photo print's colour range and sensitivity is not the same as your bubble jet printer my friend. You can talk till the cows come home and keep showing your printed proof to the staff at the photo shop or a series of photo shops and it will still not be spot-on. And another things...unless you are going to those rare and very specialised photoshop with really professionally trained staff ( which means very expensive reproduction fees) dont expect your local neightbourhood photo shop to do great work on your job. And they are most likely colour blind. heheh You do need to be train to look at colours and understanding how to use the machine to fine tune its setting to produce your works. Also to get your prints closer to your bubble jet printout..you actually have to know what brand is their photo developing machine, software use, driver info..etc Which I doubt you would and also if the shop actually know how to calibrate their machine to not just do you prints but thousand of others too.
The nearest possible "fit" to getting something reasonable close to the way your image look would be to have your file convert to sRGB I or II. Then do all the picture manipulation that you want, change the colour..etc then use that file to send for reproduction at the photo shops. That is "suppose" to be the universal standard but dont take that claim literally. It is still not a perfect science yet.
In ending, if you are happy with what your printer has printed as proofs...why not buy more of the paper and do your own printing. That's what I do.
I could write alot more about this topic but I think this will help abit in explaining to let you know that you are chasing a perfection that is not here yet.
