On the printing Christine, I can confirm both phenomenon and cure. My monitor is calibrated (using my usual favourite Cambridge in Colour that has a very extensive calibration sequence). I use an Epson printer and the print dialogue boxes I get AFTER giving the print command from PSE4 include 'Colour management' that has brightness & contrast sliders and colour sliders for CMYK individually. I usually find +10 in the brightness does the trick and doing it in the printer command does not affect the original. In a case where colour is critical, other adjustments might be needed. I expect the HP software has a similar adjuster - ask Paul.

On the business of RAW, please see thread I have started on using canon's own Digital Photo Professional. Sorry the v 2.2 download is 80MB, but worth every second. Editing becomes a joy instead of the sweat it used to be when I was having to do FZ7 jpg in PSE. I have only been back to PSE once in editing my first 200 RAW pics when the sky came out noisy. But PSE is good for printing.

You should not have lost anything, hopefully if you search for the folder you downloaded into from camera, the original .CR2 s will still be there.