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Home >> Photography >> Digital
X-Rite ColorMunki Photo review
December 14, 2009
Introduction
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at some color management tools, but ever since X-Rite introduced the ColorMunki, I’ve been intrigued by what this cost effective package can do to calibrate and profile monitors and to create custom printer profiles.
I own and use X-Rite’s pro-oriented color management package, the Eye One Photo (aka i1 Photo), which is based around the very highly regarded precision, Swiss-made spectrophotometer. The spectrophotometer is capable of calibrating and profiling monitors as well as to create custom printer profiles, just like the ColorMunki. The big issue for many photographers wanting the quality of the Eye One Photo is the cost, because the basic packages start at about CAD $1,200 and keep going up from there to CAD $1,800, depending on which features and capabilities you need (RGB vs. CMYK profiling; scanner and camera profiling, etc.)
One of the ways that X-Rite differentiates the Eye One Photo packages for printer profiling is with small and big chart profiling. The cheaper packages can only do small chart printer profiling while the big chart packages cost another $200-300 more. For example, when I bought my Eye One Photo, I bought a basic package that could only do small chart profiling and then paid an upgrade fee to enable the software to allow big chart profiling. Small and big chart refers to the number of color patches you print out and then measure with the spectrophotometer. The small chart offers a 100 or so patches to measure whereas the big chart has over 900 patches. The really high-end profiling packages offer charts with multiple thousands of patches to measure (mechanically, not by hand).
Does size matter? Eye One Photo at left, ColorMunki at Right
The ColorMunki is much more affordable at around CAD $600 and the number of patches to measure for printer profiling is a scant 100 large patches spread out over two sheets of letter sized paper. Can you really get a high quality custom printer profile from 100 patches versus over 900? That’s the key question I wanted to answer when I heard about the ColorMunki, but first, let’s look at the ColorMunki itself.
The long-time gold standard, the Eye One spectrophotometer, and the newcomer, the ColorMunki
The ColorMunki
You’ll be forgiven if at first glance, you think the ColorMunki is a tape measure, because it definitely looks like one of the large ones used by contractors.
There are three versions of the ColorMunki, the Design, the Create and the Photo. I requested the Photo version for review since that’s what this website is all about. The other two versions are marketed to designers who need to ensure critical color matching.
The ColorMunki comes with a neoprene-like cover that you use for measuring monitors. The soft cover ensures that your monitor will not be scratched. The cover has a weighted tail attachment that acts as a counterweight for the ColorMunki when you place it on the monitor. The tail can be shortened or lengthened to accommodate different screen sizes. I gave my LCDs a tilt back to help keep the ColorMunki flush to the screen (I do this with the Eye One Photo too).
The ColorMunki also comes with a USB cord and software discs. After I installed the software from the discs and fired it up, it advised me that updated software is available, which I downloaded and installed before using the ColorMunki.
The measuring sensor is located at the bottom of the ColorMunki and there is no need for a separate white or black plate or paper for calibrating the ColorMunki prior to doing a measurement, as it is internal to the ColorMunki. The Eye One Photo’s spectrophotometer needs to sit on a base station with a piece of white ceramic for the sensor to read for its calibration. My old X-Rite/Monaco monitor calibrator needs to sit on a black piece of paper for its calibration routine.
The ColorMunki has a large control dial that covers both sides of the unit. There are four click-stop settings for different functions. The four settings are, starting from the top to bottom:
- Ambient light measuring
- Projector measuring
- Calibration of the ColorMunki
- Measuiring for monitors and print charts
On the left side of the ColorMunki, inside the diameter or the control dial is a large button that is used to activate the unit’s calibration or to activate the measuring sensor when reading the print charts.
The software prompts you to rotate the dial, as needed for each function. The softwate also provides access to instructional videos that can be played back if you’re stuck on how a particular setting or feature works.
On top of the ColorMunki is a sensor used to measure the ambient light of your room, which can be an important aspect of the monitor calibration process.
That’s pretty much it for the ColorMunki and usage is straightforward.
Using the ColorMunki
I used the ColorMunki with my desktop PC system, as it is my primary photo-editing machine. The computer has dual Intel Xeon quad core (eight cores) CPUs, 8 GB of RAM, 4 hard drives and a 512 MB ATI GPU. The monitors are a 30-inch Dell LCD and a 24-inch Acer LCD. The OS is 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.
Primary software used for the evaluation process is Adobe Photoshop CS3. Test images are 16-bit TIFF files tagged with ProPhoto RGB. I viewed them direct in Photoshop and also with the soft proofing view using the specific custom printer profiles.
Prior to using the ColorMunki, I removed the Eye One Photo start-up routines from the Windows Start-up folder, so that the Eye One Photo monitor profiles would not be loaded to the GPU’s look-up table (LUT) and conflict with the monitor profiles loaded to the LUT by the ColorMunki’s start-up routine.
The ColorMunki's weighted tail and case
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