ColorMunki Photo - Monitor, Printer & Projector Profiler | 
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| Brand: X-Rite
Category: CE
List Price: $499.00
Buy New: $394.00
You Save: $105.00 (21%)
New (15) Used (2)
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Xp Professional, Mac Os X
Media: Electronics
Operating System: Mac OS X
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 3.5 x 3.8 x 1.8
MPN: CMUNPH
Model: CMUNPH
EAN: 7640111922001
ASIN: B00169N0BK
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
ColorMunki Photo is the innovative way to bring your photos from screen to print with color perfection. Designed for wedding, social, or portrait photographers, this color control solution delivers technological features for display, projector, and RGB/CMYK printer profiling. You'll now be able to send your images to your clients, confident that they will be viewed in a calibrated environment, using the DigitalPouch communication tool. All this delivered in an all-in-one integrated solution with a streamlined interface, making the most of your digital workflow. All-in-One spectrophotometer means no separate devices needed to profile your displays and printers. ColorMunki lets you swing perfectly from screen to print with quick, easy, and accurate display-to-print match. Software guides you through whichever profiling function you desire. Select 'Match My Printer To My Display' and you'll be completely guided through the profiling process for both your display and your printer. ColorMunki can calibrate multiple displays with ease and provides before and after visualization, as well as calibration reminder prompts. ColorMunki's superfast scanning can rapidly measure test charts in less than one minute. With AppSet, ColorMunki talks with your photo and design applications to automate printer profile settings. ColorMunki automatically extracts the top colors, or you can go directly into your image and add any color to your palette. With ColorMunki's PrintSafe checking capabilities, you'll be able to preview your color palettes under different lighting sources or printing processes before you go to production.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Much Promise, But A Very Poor Payoff December 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm using Vista Ultimate, have lots of ram, an Epson 3800 and have experienced many "issues" with my Color Munki Photo. The problems started the first day I plugged it in over three months ago. The unit has been replaced by the manufacturer without avail. There are serious conflicts with Vista color correction (Microsoft has culpability here too), but it's advertised to work with Vista OS yet I've yet to get good color corrections.
Support by X-Rite swings between helpful through downright condescending. I previously used a Spyder with few problems. I'm no color expert but I do understand the basics of color workflow. The feeling that I get from support is that the problems are all external to the Color Munki. I was told that my monitor was too bright (it's a medium bright, 325 cd/m2, wide gamut LCD monitor), Microsoft, Adobe etc. Most offensive of all, X-Rite keeps trying to cross sell me on training!!! Why would I give them one additional cent?
This product simply IS NOT READY for prime time. I'm sorry that I didn't return it when the support specialist told me that my problem would be fixed in a software release. Not to blame support entirely, the saying goes something like... "the fish stinks from the head"... obviously, the marketing people here got WAY ahead of engineering with the Color Munki.
 Five Star (except) December 18, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Don't know what the negitive reviews are about. Just opened the box an hour ago and have both monitor and printer profiled. Was very easy, just follow the on-screen instructions. You do however have to have a good working knowledge of you printer and the application you are printing from. You must turn off the printers Color Management and be able to select the printer profile saved after running Colormunki in the application you are printing from.
The "exception" in the title of this review is that as so many others, I feel the license only being good for 3 computers is a concern, I like others burn through computers in about six-months. No indication from x-lite if there is an alternitive to buying a new unit and software after the three downloads.
To sum-up ColorMunki Photo works as advertised if you do your homework (like checking printer compatibility before you buy) and have the knowledge to use advanced settings for you haedware and printers.
 Do Your Homework First! December 5, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I've had the ColorMunki for a couple months now. I really hate to write bad reviews on what seems to potentially be a great product, so I've waited until I cooled down some. But this product has a variety of problematic issues and is not for the color management novice.
I bought it based on reviews I had read about it which were mostly very good. If, when you install the software and create a monitor profile and if it installs without problems, and if you can figure out how to locate and set up the new profile as your default profile, and if you can figure out that you will need to change all the manual settings on your monitor, and if you know what to do when your monitor finally looks great but your printed photos look worse than ever...then you may be pleased.
However, from start to finish (if you can actually finish, which I haven't been able to do yet), I had one problem after another. It took me two days to get it to work on my laptop (Vista Premium) and another two days to get it to work on my desktop (XP). I will follow up later with examples of how poorly written the instructions are. The entire "manual" for installing the software and calibrating monitors, printers and projectors is not much more than 3-5 sentences for each type of hardware. Important steps are left out. The elementary school student drawings in the paper manual and online video tutorial, don't always match up with the instructions. The instructions should not be followed in the order that they are written, but you need to figure out how to move forwards and backwards from page to page to figure out what you are really supposed to do in what sequence.
Their website is one of the most amateurish designed sites you have ever seen and trying to find trouble-shooting help information is a long tedious process and you get answers like "if you get error code you may need third party software". That's it! It doesn't tell you why you get the error, what the error code means, or what kind of 3rd party software you need. You are on you own!
You can't even use this $500 device unless they have your phone number. You have to be connected to the internet to connect to their website to get them your phone number but the registration form you have to complete first wouldn't work on Windows IE. Before you can access their website for installation you have to select "ACTIVATE" but that button won't function until you REGISTER and that keeps freezing. I had to uninstall the software multiple times just to get to their website and register there before getting the software to come up onscreen.
Also, you are limited to 3 "unique" devices. So, if it doesn't work well on one of your devices, too bad, you only have two activations left.
If, the software doesn't install correctly, or if the calibrator freezes up, you are told the problem may be that you need to change your Vista Premium settings and change them to Vista Basic. Then you are told you need to change your computer settings in different places from their high performance to lower performance settings. After doing all these changes you find out that they had nothing to do with why the installation wasn't working and you have to try and remember all the changes you made so you can go back and restore them.
I emailed them for help (they even make locating their email support address almost impossible to find on their website). I got a response the next day (that's pretty good) but their response seemed to be answering a different question than I had asked.
I replied back to their email and directly cited where their manual and their tutorial images did not match up and asked what I should do about one of the frequent error messages that prevent the color management calibration from completing. I haven't heard from them since, that was two months ago.
Fortunately, I know a professional color management consultant who helped me get my monitor profiled. The result is really nice, it never looked so good. But, even he couldn't figure out how to get my Epson RX680 printer to color match what I see on my monitor. (I use Photoshop). Although the color improvement in both my laptop and my desktop monitors looks very good, I have them sitting beside each other and the same image looks different on each one. So far, the two computers and the printer, all look nice but none of the different units match each other's colors.
You should find their website, xrite.com, take a look at their "manual" and their trouble shooting "faqs" and especially their "video tutorials" and have a good laugh before you shell out so much money. Make sure that whoever you buy this unit from will take it back if you don't like it!
I'll try calling them and see if I get any meaningful help and will update this review later. I hope I'll have better news to share.
 Acts like a preproduction prototype November 28, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
We have a custom studio with many monitors, a printer and a projector. Our Spyder is long in the tooth and won't do projectors, hence the Munki.
Numerous other posters complained about the crummy software, but didn't dissuade me because I never saw all the problems listed in one place. Here we go:
Disc doesn't have actual code, just sends you to their site to download 250MB of file.
Link didn't work, had to go directly there to get it. Download gagged twice before success.
Limited to load on 3 machines, which is not enough for us, but I figured a way to cheat it.
No "CRT" choice in cal menu, use LCD.
Only 3 fixed color temps.
Won't handle multiple monitors in Win XP without a prog from MS called Color Tool.
No gamma control.
No profile naming.
After fighting thru all that, then the hardware fun starts:
Hang straps are a joke. Most people who cal also have a screen hood so they CAN'T work.
Device frequently gets in an endless CAL/SET loop and has to be reinitialized.
Who thought of this stupid zipper case that must be removed and replaced during the CAL sequence?
The profile created is pretty good on both my displays and the projector. Probably better than the Spyder BUT, the "measure room light" option is whacko. Turn it off and the profile looks like a 60's album cover even in complete darkness.
The fact is, I know of nothing near the price that will do all this. Version 2 probably will be fine , but be prepared for a load of hassle.
 Does exactly what I hoped it would do; some customer support reservations November 28, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I decided to get the Colormunki after struggling for over a year to get my Canon Pro9000 printer to produce prints that were consistently accurate representations of my photos, as they looked on my monitor - I had a monitor calibrator, but that's only one part of what you need in color management. I had used generic profiles for the paper I was using in the past and did all thing things you are supposed to do with the color management settings to get things right, but still experienced highly inconsistent results. After much reading, I determined that getting custom profiles for my printer/paper combinations might be the way to go. The Colormunki allows you to profile your printer specifically for the paper you are using, in addition to calibrating your monitor.
The profiler controls are easily understood and engaged; in order to profile the printer you will need to use at least two sheets of whatever paper you are profiling, and you will need to profile for each type of paper you use - each paper gets its own custom profile - so there is some initial expenditure of ink and paper to get your profiles ready. But that's nothing compared to the ink and paper you would have wasted trying to get an acceptable print without a custom profile, so I don't see that as a disadvantage.
Things did not go smoothly at first though - you're supposed to use the Colormunki to scan a series of color patches and when I first printed out my color patches my printer was apparently low on magenta and did not properly print out the patches that had magenta in it. I was unaware of that, and as I attempted to scan the patches, the Colormunki would simply tell me the scan had failed and not offer any tips as to where to begin locating the point of failure. It wasn't until I used the online help and wandered in and out of several articles (their online article resource is not well-organized) that I finally stumbled on a sentence that pointed me in the right direction. Once over that hurdle, the profiling proceeded very quickly and very easily. I was then able to make more profiles without any hitches at all. But my review gets 4 stars instead of 5, as I believe the makers of Colormunki could have done a much better job in creating and organizing the help documentation. There needs to be more of an effort on their part to address the questions that might arise for a user that has no knowledge of the finer points of color profiling - their help documentation seems to gloss over a number of things, or assume that the user would already know them. Given that the product is marketed to the general consumer, this is potentially a serious misstep on their part.
I cannot speak for the projector profiler feature as I do not have a use for that and have not tested it.
In summary, I've seen a vast improvement in the color accuracy of my prints since using the Colormunki, but be aware that troubleshooting any problems with this product can lead to a lot of frustration if you don't already have the expertise that would help you know where to start looking.
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