ColorMunki: More Fun Than a Barrel of Spectrophotometers,
By Mike Martens, Calumet Photographic

ColorMunki has a funny Web 2.0 sort of name, like flickr, kuler or YouTube. It’s a name that implies
a friendly interface and an enjoyable user experience. ColorMunki also has X-Rite’s pedigree, the company whose devices are widely relied upon at the pinnacles of the photo production industry.
A complete X-Rite color workflow system—like the i1Photo—is pricey, daunting and largely unnecessary for the majority of photographers…  It’s like shooting a baseball game with the Hubble telescope.
Of course, a paper tube isn’t ideal for the job either.

Continuing on that analogy a little more, ColorMunki attempts to provide the quality of an interstellar telescope with the straightforward simplicity of a rolled up newspaper. This balance is noticeable in every aspect of ColorMunki, and its form and function are full of clever solutions to the problems of packing so many high-end features into such a simple device.

Design
The ColorMunki device is a pretty slickly designed unit, revolving around a simple dial that switches between calibration modes. There are a few clunky aspects in the design, but nothing interferes with an otherwise solidly executed concept. For instance, the shared path of the counterweight strap and USB cable is a bit awkward but only occasionally interferes with measurements. Overall, the device’s design efficiently combines spectrophotometer and colorimeter and other goodies without becoming cumbersome.

Printer Profiling
Here’s where ColorMunki gets interesting. When creating printer profiles, most spectrophotometers use
a grid of several hundred printed color patches, which are—in most cases—manually measured one-by-one. This process is both dull and time-consuming. ColorMunki streamlines the number of patches down to two sheets of 50. The first chart samples from across the spectrum. After the first is measured, ColorMunki creates a second, comprised of colors common to photographs: earth tones, flesh tones, sky and water blues and architectural grays.

Now, the really unusual part: to measure the test charts, you briskly run the device across several strips of patches. Considering the traditional method, it’s pretty astonishing that this works. Once you get the feel for the pacing, it’s pretty smooth. But it’s a little tricky at first. While the software lets you know if your scan worked or not, there’s no notation of what causes failed scans. Guess-and-test gets you through, but this is a case where a more technical explanation could actually make the process easier.

The final profiles are quite good, though. Again, that the ColorMunki’s approach works at all is pretty astonishing, and prints made with this simple profiling compare favorably to manufacturers’ profiles on most photos. Of course, this also means you'll be able to produce high quality profiles even when manufacturer's profiles don't exist, whether that's because of a new paper or less common printer. If colors in an image don’t replicate correctly, you can enhance the profile. Using your own photos to generate these enhancing test charts, the ColorMunki software gives you very precise color reproduction for your images.

While a lab servicing a wide variety of professionals would likely want the extra long-term efficiency and range of precision provided by a traditional profiling system, there is something to be said for fine-tuning a profile with a client’s image.

ColorPicker
Using ColorPicker, ColorMunki grabs colors off physical surfaces, allowing you to work these colors into photo or design work with good accuracy. It’s Photoshop’s eyedropper tool in the real world.

When I tested this using coated Pantone guides, ColorMunki was able to pin the colors down within a few RGB digits. Uncoated guides varied to a much greater degree. While ColorMunki was able to distinguish that reddish-brown was reddish-brown, it wasn’t able to pinpoint the precise Pantone value. As you’d expect, real world materials ranging from skin to a chrome blue computer were pulled with varying accuracy depending on the surface. Even though ColorPicker can be quite accurate, it’s probably not consistent enough for critical measurements (e.g. fashion designers looking for precise color matches
on fabric). Still, there are a lot of neat potential uses for this feature especially if you incorporate
graphic design in your photo work or vice versa.

Troubleshooting
One of the problems with simple interfaces is that when something goes wrong, you feel helpless.
Things either work, or they don’t. Across the wide assortment of systems I tested the ColorMunki on, there were only a few situations where things didn’t work. In most cases, these were user error. As I touched upon in the Printer Profiling section, the documentation often lacks technical details that would help users solve issues on their own. However, when I spoke with an X-Rite representative about the problems, he was able to quickly diagnose the issues and provide simple solutions. So, while you may feel helpless, you’re definitely not hopeless.

Other Features
ColorMunki bundles even more features in its package, as well. You can calibrate the display
of a projector, great for use with clients and in educational settings. A software application called
DigitalPouch allows you to send clients a color-controlled version of your images. And for designers, there’s an expansive Pantone library and palette creation system. Essentially, no display of color escapes ColorMunki without calibration.

Conclusion
What X-Rite has created in the ColorMunki is an entire color workflow in one accessible device. That should be alluring to lots of photographers. Sure, ColorMunki probably isn’t ideal for high-end commercial labs, where absolute precision is necessary in even the most far-off ends of the color space. I can’t emphasize strongly enough, however, that this fact shouldn’t deter the rest of us. As a color calibration system, ColorMunki is designed for serious photographers who want to spend time with their photos—not their computers. And it succeeds at this at nearly every level of its conception and execution.