Pantone ColorMunki Design

View Larger Image Average Rating: Lowest Price: Too low to display

• Create and name unlimited custom color palettes with Palette Creation software
• Select colors from Pantone, other built-in libraries, and dynamically associated Harmony, Variation, and Similar colors
• Preview your colors before you go to production with unique verification tools
• Communicate effortlessly--Automatically synchronize palettes to Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and QuarkXpress, or export to your favorite photo and design applications
• All-in-one true spectral device with built-in white calibration tile calibrates LCD and laptop displays, RGB and CMYK printers, and digital projectors

Similar Products

• X-Rite ColorChecker Passport
  
• Pantone Formula Guide Coated, unCoated, matte
  
• Apple Remote
  
• ColorMunki Photo - Monitor, Printer & Projector Profiler
  
• Wacom Intuos4 Medium Pen Tablet
  

About This Product

Your new best friend for professional color palette creation and color control. ColorMunki Design is a color creation and inspiration solution with robust color selection, verification, specification and sharing functionality. Select colors from Pantone® PMS and GoeTM libraries, image libraries or capture spot colors from just about any surface, plus preview out-of-gamut by paper type. Includes essential color control functions for calibrating displays, projectors and printers with spot color optimization with a fully integrated all-in-one device. Designed with powerful features and an easy-to-use, intuitive interface, you'll soon be calling ColorMunki Design your new best friend. Ideal for agencies, corporate in-house and freelance designers.

Customer Reviews

• It works well, is easy and quick to use, and is Windows 7 compatible

• Rating:
• Review: First off, the software installation limit has been lifted. Check their website. They got complaints, they responded, not an issue. So to be clear, you can install the software on, and calibrate as many machines as you need to.
  
  I've been in graphic design for many years. I've used many Fiery RIPs, I've used densitometers for calibrating them, and I've used the Spyder product. The problem, most tools only calibrate either the monitor or the printer. Only a few do the obvious thing of calibrating BOTH. And those that do tend to be very expensive. That's what makes this product so special, it does BOTH, and does it well, for a very reasonable price. Here's our situation...
  
  We purchased a mid-range ($15k) color printer and didn't want to pay for the Fiery option. Output was relatively accurate, but certain colors, particularly blues shifting to purple were a problem on the output. And of course there was the challenge of making the monitor look remotely like the output... or the double challenge of having two monitors, making them match each other, and having those screens, match the printer output...
  
  In short, Color Munki fixed everything, and made everything match. Given that monitors are RGB and emitting light, and prints are generally CMYK and reflecting light, it's impossible to truly match, but it got as close as I could have hoped for.
  
  I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit. The Color Munki support people insisted that it doesn't work in windows 7. Well... it does. It works just fine. Just download and install the Windows Vista 64bit version. The only problem was, when you plug in the device, windows thought it was some other type of device. I had to manually click the "update driver" button, and show it where the driver was in the install folder. Aside from that, it was a non issue.
  
  The device is very well designed, such that there are only 3 pieces. The cord, the pouch that holds it on the monitor and protects it, and the device. Not much there to it. It will self calibrate from an internal target. It works on any monitor, projector, and printed output to calibrate everything together.
  
  Calibrating the monitor takes about 1-2 minutes. Calibrating the printer takes 2 prints, and any drying time that might be needed for inkjet output. If your printer has problem colors, you can sample those from everyday objects, or printed output that didn't look right, and update the printer profile to dial in those specific colors. I did this on my problem blues shifting to purple, and what was fixed 98% by the initial calibration, was fixed 100% after that.
  
  I've successfully calibrated an RGB printer (that uses CMYK ink), a CMYK laser printer, and two monitors, one of which looked horrible until calibrated. I've also used the same device to calibrate those same printers to another Windows XP machine, and a Mac OSX laptop. No issues on any of them, output looks great on all of them.
  
  This is a good and accurate calibration tool, but, it is simple. There is not a lot of extra tweaking and adjustment to be done here. If you really want to spend hours hand adjusting calibrations, this won't make you happy. If you are busy, and don't have time to spend hours every week, screwing with wonky colors, use this, it takes about 5 minutes every 4 weeks to update a calibration (if you want to or need to update) and everything always matches and looks good.
  
  To sum it up: it works and works well, the software is simple (almost too much so), it is compact with no parts to lose, the device is easy to use, and works on multiple machines in your home or office. It works on projectors (I haven't tested that part yet), and any display screen be it LCD, Plasma, or CRT, and any printer output.
  
  
  **FOR THOSE USING ADOBE APPLICATIONS, READ THIS, IT WILL SAVE YOU TIME AND HEADACHES:
  
  
  In the beginning, I found color management very confusing, and had to learn and research what settings go where, so everyone, here are the untold dirty secrets of how to make color calibration work with the Adobe suite, if you've never done color management before, I'm saving you at least a few hours here:
  
  In the Creative Suite application's "color settings", you define your color working space. This is confusing for new users, because they are tempted to pick their monitor or printer calibrations here. Don't. The monitor calibration is on the OS level, not the application level. And the printer profile is only for printing. Here (when using color munki) you are supposed to use the "North America Prepress 2" preset setting, which is a preset for "Adobe RGB" and "US Web Coated (SWOP)v2". When you open documents, adobe will often warn you that the color profile doesn't match. You can convert it to adobe RGB, or leave it as sRGB. It doesn't matter much. Adobe RGB can display a wider range of colors, so if you are generating original art and picking bright colors, you can print some colors that might not print if you were only using the sRGB profile. If you want to, stick with sRGB and "US Web Coated (SWOP)" you'll be a tiny bit limited on your color reproduction, but you won't have the annoying messages, and your color files will probably have less potential for colors changing send it to someone else. (I've been working in Adobe RGB, but in hind sight probably should have stayed in sRGB)
  
  Now, to confuse things even more as referenced above, many photos and documents have embedded color profiles. The overwhelming standard used for cameras, scanners, and other devices is sRGB, that is why you will get that "profile mis-match" warning warning so often. This is generally ok. Don't worry about converting the embedded profiles unless you really want to. (I just turn off the warning)
  
  When you PRINT in the Adobe Suite of products. Set the application to manage color, and choose the printer color profile you made with the printer you're sending the job to. **Turn off the option that says "preserve CMYK values" if it is present** (otherwise your output will be way way off). In the printer driver, turn off all color management, and make sure you always print to the same paper stock that you calibrated to, and use the same printer settings that you calibrated to.
  
  Don't worry about the monitor calibration profiles in your day to day printing, you do not choose your monitor calibration from any of the options. This is done in the computer color management, and color munki set's the proper profile as the default for when you calibrate. In other words, you're *always* using your monitor profile (from the OS), and never have to choose it when printing... The printer profile tells your computer how to send the data to the printer so the output looks and prints correctly. The monitor profile tells your computer how to send data to the monitor so it looks and displays correctly. They are independent from each other. And neither the monitor nor the printer "know" that they have been calibrated.
  
  This is a good product, and color management in general can be confusing at first. As long as you understand the basic concepts, it all makes a lot more sense. I hope this helps someone.

---

• Still trying to get ColorMunki to create great prints

• Rating:
• Review: I also recently purchased the ColorMunki as an attempt to get quality images out of my Nikon D300. Some how between my Nikon 300, Photoshop CS4 and an Epson i9900 printer this has not been an achievable goal. I purchased the ColorMunki to solve this problem. The ColorMunki is not only marketed as a calibrator for your monitor but also for your printer. Unlike your experience, installing and using ColorMunki was anything but easy. I had to do major upgrading of Windows XP and struggle to install Net Framework 3.5. After that I spent hours watching the help videos and trying to apply what I saw to the ColorMunki hardware and software. If found the experience to be anything but intuitive.
  
  None the less, I now own the product and it has improved the appearance of my prints. However, I can only say they look better and given the lack of success I had before with color shifts and mismatching it's not saying much. My goal is still to get great looking prints. I have been working with the people at Experts Exchange that I subscribe to. Experts Exchange has successfully solved many of my computer & technical problems and is an extremely affordable solution for technical support. However (again), they are having problems considering the ColorMunki to be a satisfactory solution as a profiling spectrophotometer. The most recent post I received ran like this...
  
  "after you install the software that came with your colormunki, you will have to print several color patches from the software. then you have to scan them with the profiler, and that will create your printer profile. after another similar procedure, involving multiple screens of color, you will have created the monitor profile. util this stage most color profilers works perfectly.
  
  then software goes to work, and calibrates the monitor profile to match your printer. this is the stage where they fail. lots of trial and error is required in this stage."
  
  Needless to say I was not thrilled by the statement "this is the stage where they fail. lots of trial and error is required in this stage". I will continue to work on this, but look forward to any thoughts any of you may have.
  
  Jeff

---

• Excellent Performer

• Rating:
• Review: After enduring years of dealing with mismatched colours between my monitor and printer I decided to spend the money on a Colormunki that was offset by a rebate and special price offer. Apart from some of the actual users' reviews, I have not read a bad review for this product. I have an XP system and did not experience any problems with either the installation or operation of the Colormunki device or the Design software. I followed the instructions and didn't change printer settings after profiling the printer.
  
  The ability to define additional colours that can be fine tuned for the printer after the first profiling iteration is very useful. I was able to get even more accurate colour rendition between my monitor and printer.
  
  If I have one complaint it is x-rite's refusal to allow users to switch between the Photo and Design editions of the software without buying the hardware all over again. The hardware is identical between the products and I prefer the layout of the Photo software. It is a silly attitude on x-rite's part and only mares one's impression of this very useful product.

---

• Poor software, doesn't work on three different computers

• Rating:
• Review: I bought ColorMunki Design back in April. Installing the software takes forever since X-rite includes a long installation of Net Framework. And every incremental upgrade requires a bloated download including the Net Framework and the very slow installation. I'm a long time customer of Monaco (acquired by X-rite) and of X-rite using their excellent i1 2 display profile system with Eye-One Match software. I assumed ColorMunki would be as good as other highly regarded Xrite products but with more versatility. I was sadly wrong.
  
  My first contact with X-rite support was regarding the registration process that wasn't working as it was supposed to. After getting the product registered, I was able to run display calibration with a decidedly pink cast. I was able to use the colorimeter to sample object colors and calibrate a digital projector via a notebook computer. But the profiles all had a pink cast. After updating my display card's driver, I found ColorMunki refused to complete a display profile. The process would hang, and I contacted Xrite support who provided personal service but without ever being very effective. They ended up providing a registry toggle that turned off my NEC display's hardware profiling feature. That eventually got display profiling to function, but still with a pink tint that was obviously bad for the target color temperature. The software for display profiling is poor. You can choose the basic "easy" mode with little control over the profiling parameters. If you choose advanced, the software insists on measuring ambient light to set your display's brightness. If you work where ambient lighting doesn't change during the day, that's a workable limitation. But if you don't, you had better profile the display during the brightest part of your day or you'll be working with a display that's too dim. Since the product was brand new to the market, I took a "wait and see perspective" and hoped that updates would fix profile accuracy an offer better user control.
  
  I discovered that the display driver I had been using had a bug that interfered with my NEC display's hardware calibration and passed that information along to X-rite support. A new driver fixed that bug, and X-rite has an update to ColorMunki so I decided to give it another try for profiling. This time, I started to get erratic behavior from ColorMunki. Sometimes a profile would run normally, but still pink. But other times the device wouldn't be recognized, or the process would hang. I tried different USB ports, and cables and eventually was sent a replacement colorimeter by X-rite support.
  
  I had given up on using ColorMunki for display calibration by that time. I had my i1 colorimeter to fall back on so I decided to keep ColorMunki for color swatch sampling and perhaps eventually doing printer profiling for specialy paper. But I found that I couldn't get the ColorMunki software to recognize the ColorMunki device on either my workstation or my notebook computer. I contacted X-rite support and downloaded a couple of software updates.
  
  As of today, I can't get the ColorMunki device to be recognized on three different computers. I'm trying to get a response from X-rite support, but they've become hard to find via the website (which now has an extensive troubleshooting section) and they don't return my emails. I've been not only patient but have done my best to help X-rite support with detailed descriptions and screen shots to help them sort out problems. My patience is gone and I not only want a refund or replacement with a different X-rite product, I also want to warn others that ColorMunki is an inferior product, that's ineffectively supported. I say that as a graphic designer with over a decade of display profiling experience using excellent tools from Monaco and X-rite.
  
  The ColorMunki device itself is versatile, but very clumsy to use for display profiling. I find that it's very easy to accidentally press the large button area in the center hub as I try to rotate the device through its self-calibration position to it's display measurement position. The colorimeter comes with a neoprene case and weighted strap that are awkward to use as you dangle the device in front of the display.
  
  If the software was as advanced as Eye-One Match and created accurate profiles, the clumsy design would be a fair tradeoff for versatility. For me, the device fails at its most basic job of providing accurate color profiling, and X-rite has failed to get this relatively expensive package working on any of my computers.
  
  For display profiling, choose i1 Display 2 while it's available. If you run 90 series NEC displays, choose NEC's SpectraView II to unlock the full performance of your hardware, including hardware profiling. Avoid junk like X-rite's Huey (note all the reviews that describe pink profiles - I have to believe that the same incompetence is at work on Huey and ColorMunki). It pains me to see X-rite fall down so badly after serving the market well for so long.

---

• Software on vista is crap

• Rating:
• Review: I had high hopes for this product for all it's supposed to be able to do. The calibration portion and hardware works fine, however I can't get the Design software to function properly. The program installs initially and then won't open. I can see the process running but the app never opens. They recently released a new version of the Design sftware and that starts to open but all I get is the frame of the window and it never progresses beyond that. X-rite support has been worse then useless and unresponsive.

---