Powermunki - anyone seen this at PMA or so?

[Venkman]

It looks like a great tool - but then all of the color management tools do so at the first glance.

Does anyone have any more input from PMA or any other trade show?

ColorMunki - ColorMunki Photo

Dirk

[WPalank]

Dirk,
On another Forum I belong to, Andrew Rodney aka Digital Dog, a big Color Management Guru says he is currently a beta tester for the product and said he is pretty amazed.
I believe he said it won't hit the street until June of this year with a street price around $500 US.

[overgaardcom]

It seem as it will be part of the Pantone product range and the price of 455$ - 500$ indicates it will be a bit above the Eye One Display but able to help finetune projectors and printers as well - which is anyway the next thing you want to do when you have calibrated your screen.

[Jamie Roberts]

I saw this at WPPI and am also amazed; with the tests they ran they were getting pretty amazing results, especially for the money.

Now in the tradeshow set up they don't have a lot of space to run profiles of hard-to-profile papers and various printers, but given the limitations of the demonstration I was very impressed, to the point of wishing my GMB PM5 software worked as well and as easily.

The notion of profiling projectors is also important for me, and a real bonus for the price!

[Venkman]

Thank you all, that was the kind of feedback I hoped for.

I stumbled over this product on another site, did some quick research and saw that it is due to be released end of March. The price is 499 USD and 429 EURO (ex. VAT) - which is IMO pretty good for an "all-in-one" solution.

Definitely gonna check it now, out once it's available.

Dirk

[magd0328]

I recently received my ColorMunki and apart from a few software glitches (raised already with X-Rite) the device works well so far. I haven't profiled any monitors (read on to find out why), but have been building some printer profiles for the various papers I have on my shelf.

However, I thought I would raise a post regarding the license. On inserting the CD that came with the device I was told that I would only be able to install the software (and therefore use the ColorMunki) on three computers. This was not made clear in any of the promotional material that was released with the device (e.g. ColorMunki.com or on ColourConfidence.com, which is the main distributor). In fact the ColourConfidence website has this statement: "You never need to worry about colour accuracy again – now ColorMunki does that for you." Well, that is only true if you keep the same computer for the rest of your life.

This is a big concern for me - I already have three computers: a laptop, a recent iMac (my main PC) and an older iMac in the spare room which I use for printing.

What happens when I upgrade? I was planning to upgrade my laptop next year. Do I have to buy a new software license for the ColorMunki when I do this? This seems remarkably unfair and I would have thought a large part of the target audience (advanced amateur, semi-pro photographer, wedding photographer etc) is quite likely to own least two machines (desktop and laptop) and upgrade reasonably regularly. I understand that X-Rite needs to protect themselves and wouldn't want me to use the tool to calibrate other people's computers, but the terms of the license seem unnecessarily strict. I don't have to buy a new license for my printer, my scanner, my camera, my external hard drives etc when I upgrade my computer. I have emailed Colour Confidence and will let you know what they say. I will be raising this with X-Rite as well.

Are there any other profile device owners out there who can tell me what license terms they operate under?

Cheers
magd0328

[Venkman]

That's a good point and actually one of the reasons, why I wanted to switch from a Spyder - in my household alone, I frequently use 1 desktop, 2 Windows XP laptops and 1 Macbook.
My goal was to have all of them on one comparable level.

It seems I won't reach that goal with this particular tool. Too bad, it looked nice on paper.

Dirk

[magd0328]

A quick addendum: apart from the quibble about the license I have just produced the most beautiful print from my profiled printer. I am very, very pleased with the device.

[Venkman]

Argh - that doesn't make it easier to NOT buy it

[scho]

Originally Posted by magd0328

A quick addendum: apart from the quibble about the license I have just produced the most beautiful print from my profiled printer. I am very, very pleased with the device.

Is the profile optimization functional in the current CM software release or is that one of the software "glitches"?

[magd0328]

Good guess. The profile optimisation doesn't work on my machine (iMac G5 with OS 10.4.11). The picture to be optimised loads up, but pressing 'next' causes the software to crash. I have raised a ticket with X-Rite and received a reply from one of their programmers - they are looking into it.

[mat_mcdermott]

Originally Posted by magd0328

However, I thought I would raise a post regarding the license. On inserting the CD that came with the device I was told that I would only be able to install the software (and therefore use the ColorMunki) on three computers. This was not made clear in any of the promotional material that was released with the device (e.g. ColorMunki.com or on ColourConfidence.com, which is the main distributor). In fact the ColourConfidence website has this statement: "You never need to worry about colour accuracy again – now ColorMunki does that for you." Well, that is only true if you keep the same computer for the rest of your life.

Yes, please keep us informed. I can't believe they would make you buy a new license. Perhaps there's a way to deauthorise the software when you get rid of an old computer and so that you can reauthorise the new one. I've never seen that sort of license for a piece of photo/design/film software.

[cbretteville]

Usually a"three computer license" would mean "at the time". I.e., if you upgrade PC#2 you uninstall from the old and install on the new. Even Adobe and PhaseOne allows that. But to be sure an email to support might be in order.

- Carl

[magd0328]

Hi, if it is a license for three computers at a time, that would be fine. I will follow up with them and see what they say. X-Rite tech support got back to me today - they have isolated the bug with the profile optimisation and it will be fixed in the next software release due out next week.

[scho]

Originally Posted by magd0328

Hi, if it is a license for three computers at a time, that would be fine. I will follow up with them and see what they say. X-Rite tech support got back to me today - they have isolated the bug with the profile optimisation and it will be fixed in the next software release due out next week.

That is good news. I just received a Colormunki unit today. Color profiling went well (both Epson driver RGB and ColorBurst RIP CMYK profiles). I also tried optimizing profiles and although I had no crashes or freezes (using OS 10.52, Intel Mac) I wasn't impressed with the results when I fed it a neutral grayscale image for optimizing (both RIP and Epson driver). I noticed that after the image loaded for optimization it was like instantly a dialog popped up saying the image had been analyzed and a new target was ready for printing. Makes me think that that this was just a dummy response and nothing useful was really done. I do hope that they can perfect the optimization routine, but right now it does not seem to be ready for primetime.

[scho]

Originally Posted by scho

That is good news. I just received a Colormunki unit today. Color profiling went well (both Epson driver RGB and ColorBurst RIP CMYK profiles). I also tried optimizing profiles and although I had no crashes or freezes (using OS 10.52, Intel Mac) I wasn't impressed with the results when I fed it a neutral grayscale image for optimizing (both RIP and Epson driver). I noticed that after the image loaded for optimization it was like instantly a dialog popped up saying the image had been analyzed and a new target was ready for printing. Makes me think that that this was just a dummy response and nothing useful was really done. I do hope that they can perfect the optimization routine, but right now it does not seem to be ready for primetime.

I just want to amend my comments after getting a chance to work more with ColorMunki. I can now get outstanding profiles (primarily CMYK with the ColorBurst X-Photo RIP) for both color and grayscale using the optimization routine. I even made a special variant of a grayscale optimized profile to simulate the carbon sepia tones produced with Piezotone inks and the results were excellent using my 4000 and MIS K4 inks.

[Venkman]

So....thumbs up?

[scho]

Originally Posted by Venkman

So....thumbs up?

Yes, but the software still is at the 1.0 stage and has some rough edges. CM already produces good profiles and it can only get better as the software is improved. Depending on your system configuration you may or may not have any problems. I've had some system instability and CS3 crashes that started after installing the CM software. Also, cannot open CS3 image files from the desktop anymore by double clicking - need to be opened within the application. I think these problems are related to the appset module that CM installed as a startup item.

[magd0328]

Thumbs up from me too. And X-Rite has confirmed that if I upgrade I can remove the software from my old machine and re-install onto the new machine.

[geoff]

Originally Posted by scho

Also, cannot open CS3 image files from the desktop anymore by double clicking - need to be opened within the application. I think these problems are related to the appset module that CM installed as a startup item.

No, not really. Try "Repair Disk Permissions" with "Disk Utility." Barring that, perform a "Get Info" on a CS3 image file and reassign "Open with" to Photoshop CS3 by way of the "Change All..." button.


geoff