ColorMunki photo colour checker
£375.00
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The ColourMunki colour management system promises to make light work of calibrating computer monitors and colour printers. It’s an expensive piece of kit but it’s so easy to use and will improve your results at a stroke.
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Why is it that the image that spews forth from your printer looks nothing like the picture you edited on screen? Most digital photographers fall prey to the colour management monster at some point in their photographic lives. It’s the biggest nightmare we face.
Over the years the Photo answers team has tried plenty of colour management systems, but most have been extremely complicated or simply not very effective. Then one day the ColorMunki landed on our desk. It could be easily confused with an industrial tape measure but this gadget conceals far greater sophistication – it’ll calibrate your monitor, printer and even a projector as well.
The supplied software guides you through the setting-up process with some expensive-looking animations that leave you in no doubt what to do, so you can’t go wrong. It’s really that simple. You’ll end up with a more accurate display and be left wondering how you ever managed before.
The worst part is that now you’ll look back at pictures you edited months ago and think the colours look so terrible you’ll want to re-edit them now that you have a more accurate screen.
Next up comes the really tough task – making your prints match the colours on your newly balanced screen. Once again, the ColorMunki proves incredibly easy and guides you through the process with more animations on screen. The process even counts down the time you should wait for the prints to dry before you start calibrating. Talk about attention to detail!
The ColorMunki is one of the easiest colour management systems we’ve ever seen. It’s not cheap at £375 but accurate colour is so incredibly important to photographers, we think this system is worth the cash.
System requirements Windows XP or Vista with Pentium IV or greater; Mac OS X 10.5 or greater with G4 processor or greater; 512MB of RAM; 300MB free disk space; powered USB drive; display resolution of 1024x768 or higher
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I'd and heard so much about the importance of monitor and printer calibration that I decided to invest in the colormunki. It is very easy to use and the tutorial video is very good. Calibrating my monitor was very quick and easy. Calibrating my printer/paper combination was also (or so it seemed) very easy- although one of the small rubber feet on the base of the unit would stick on the printer paper and eventually came off. Once calibrated I thought I was was home and dry and would be able to see on the screen exactly what my prints would look like. How wrong I was! On screen everything looked lovely- but the prints were awful with dark muddy colours- particularly snow. To acheive anything like an acceptable print, I had to increase the brightness/contrast in Elements to such a degree that there was virtually no detail at all in areas of snow when viewed on screen. I've asked a friend who is a professional landscape photographer if he's familiar with colormunki but he wasn't. However he did give me some advice on what to look out for with respect to calibration. Sadly all the information he gave I'd followed anyway. So currently I'm left with a very expensive piece of kit a pile of very poor prints and lot less ink and paper.
(Written by: Digiphill)
20 January 2010 19:49
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As you will probably have read, the software is not supplied, and a massive download is required. This is great for me as I have a fast connection, so I will always get the most up to date software. With a slow connection forget it.
It seems to have done a very good job of calibrating my screen. It has, however, resulted in the most awful prints from my Epson Photo 2100. I can ignore the profile it made and get good prints, but that is not what I bought it for. I am sure I have misunderstood something, but I have not found out how to get the problem solved. Very frustrating!
(Written by: expat666)
16 November 2008 18:27