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by bjs on Thu Nov 07, 2013 1:57 pm
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I had a chance to snag a Colormunki Photo for $150 so bought it...figured it was worth it for the "toy" factor alone...now I'll ask...are they any good?   LOL

I'm mainly interested in printer profiling.   How does it compare to sending out for a quality custom profile?  What areas are better and what areas are worse?  Anyone made the comparison?

So far I've only measured spot colors and my lighting.  Product seems good though.
 

by Porsche917 on Thu Nov 07, 2013 5:35 pm
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Hi BJS.

In my view the Colormunki Photo items are very good. They are relatively easy to use and permit profiling of both one's computer and printer. Included in the printer profiling is matching the features of the printing paper that you are using.

So far as comparing Colomunki to a quality custom profile, I cannot answer that question. However, I am certain that someone like E.J. or Greg Downing or some of the professional photographers here on the naturescapes.net site can more than authoritatively answer your question.

Best Regards,

Roman :-)
 

by Royce Howland on Thu Nov 07, 2013 10:21 pm
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The ColorMunki Photo produces surprisingly good results for DIY custom printer profiles, in my opinion. I use one for casual stuff. I also recommend them for other people who want to do some work where custom profiling is helpful but don't want the hassle of sending test prints out to a profiling service and don't want to spring the $1300+ for the high-end X-Rite i1 Pro 2.

Profiles produced by the Munki are not the best possible, but they're very good for the level of cost and effort involved. And they're as good as or better than many of the generic profiles made available for download by the paper manufacturers.

For monitor profiling the Munki is not quite as good as some other options, but that's mainly because of the nature of the hardware device itself. It's a spectrophotometer, not a colorimeter as used by monitor-only calibration packages. Colorimeters can do a bit better job of profiling displays (particularly in the deep shadow tones), but they're limited to displays only. The Munki is a more versatile device...
Royce Howland
 

by bjs on Thu Nov 07, 2013 11:46 pm
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Thanks for the replies guys.  I spent some time this evening looking for reviews and comments.   Most reviews were pretty vacuous and uninformative, but several people on various sites have compared results directly with X-rite's professional profilers using 4000 patches etc and get "astonishingly similar" results.   Many people can't see any difference at all.

On well behaved modern printers, it sounds hard to beat.   The main limitations vis-a-vis the I1 Pro 2 are customizing options,  automation, and speed (and of course prestige).

I've already examined the spectrum of my lights (in 10nm intervals no less!) and checked their CRI values.   As expected, my Solux light looks wonderful, my fluorescents not so much!  lol.   Some fluorescents are better than others.

I'm looking forward to playing with the CMP
 

by Royce Howland on Mon Nov 11, 2013 5:12 pm
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Out of curiosity, what software did you use to check you light spectra? I'm just in the middle of doing a round of printing workshops and have shown some simple lighting examples to people. It's amazing how their eyes were opening when we threw example prints under various lighting, and also showed some spectral plots of various lighting types. Everything else being equal with the image, ink & paper, a print can only be as good as the lights shining on it... :)
Royce Howland
 

by bjs on Mon Nov 11, 2013 6:21 pm
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Argyll, specifically spotread.
 

by Royce Howland on Mon Nov 11, 2013 7:06 pm
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That's what I figured, just thought I'd double check. :)
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by ronzie on Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:39 pm
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Be sure to update the CMP software to version 1.1.1 both Win and Mac. It removes the seat count limitation but also introduces after the initial reference reference standard patch printout bailing out of the app and resuming later to allow a long time for the print to age/stabilize. For dye inks that can be quite some time.

Unfortunately they did not add that to the drying time step of the corrective patch printout so we use a cheat described later in this thread;

http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 4&t=237126

start reading from my Sep 28 post.
 

by bjs on Wed Nov 13, 2013 9:55 pm
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The CMP is also limited to A4/letter size paper without a "cheat".  I asked Xrite how to make targets for my 4x6 printer and was told it was impossible!  Luckily the cheat is as simple as changing the output paper size to 4x6 and scaling down to fit (50%).

It is actually possible (and quite reasonable) to do four target sets on a single letter size paper.   One full profile plus two optimizations will fit.  Pretty efficient for ink and paper with nice results (in spite of X-rites best efforts to force you otherwise).

The CMP takes multiple samples per patch then averages them so it will do less averaging on smaller patches but in my tests (on photo paper) the difference is immaterial.  Rougher papers with larger variation per patch may benefit from more samples.  Luckily the software rejects bad scans so one just has to try again slower (and always use a ruler!).
 

by bjs on Thu Jan 02, 2014 9:31 pm
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I've had some time to use my ColorMunki and thought others might be interested in the results.

Overall, I think the earlier comments are pretty accurate.  The CMP makes surprisingly good profiles on a modern well behaved printer like my Epson 3880.  On such a printer, most people would have trouble detecting a difference between a CMP profile and a more expensive profile. But in areas of high non-linearity (device/paper) there are differences that can sometimes become apparent.

The problem is the software's small patch count (about 100).  This is simply too few to accurately characterize a device so assumptions have to be made.  Where the printer matches the profiler engine's assumptions the results are good, otherwise not so much.

This behavior actually makes it hard to answer the typical question "If the CMP isn't perfect, where will I see the problems?".   The answer is: "Problems could be anywhere".  One printer/paper may have dark shadow non-linearities, another may be highly non-linear in medium greens.  Another may be lumpy when transitioning the inks (light magenta to magenta for example).  So it isn't predictable because essentially the CMP is doing a lot of guessing when it should be measuring!

Having said that, I think most printers tend towards non-linearity in the deep shadows so that might be a typical problem area.  Also I typically achieved good but not exceptional gray balance.  Optimizations didn't make a big difference although the documentation is very unclear about how to select the best optimization image so perhaps I could have done better with more investigation.

All in all, as a wise man once said, the CMP is very good but not the best possible.   On a modern Epson I personally think most people would be quite happy and hard pressed to see the difference between a CMP or custom profile.  But there can be differences and those differences may or may not be visible depending on the specific printer/paper/viewer combination.

In the end there are three options if one sees a difference they care about:  buy a better package, get custom profiles made, or switch to Argyll (free).   Personally I have no interest in spending more (I think $150 for my CMP was plenty!) so I choose the later.  With Argyll driving the ColorMunki the results are as good as the best so it is definitely a worthwhile alternative (assuming you can handle the command line interface and arcane commands).
 

by bjs on Sat Jan 04, 2014 2:46 pm
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Just for interest sake...here's a plot of the target patches for a 100 patch profile versus a 1950 patch profile.  Both are sampling the same printer space.   In the end there's not enough magic, patch counts matter in the pursuit of perfection!

.
Image
Image
 

by enrique patino on Tue Jan 28, 2014 4:27 pm
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is it worth doing the extra fine tuning to the profile with the ColorMunki after reading the first two sheets in the profile generation? Thanks!
 

by Royce Howland on Tue Jan 28, 2014 7:35 pm
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The only answer guaranteed to be correct is, "sometimes it's worth it and sometimes not." :) Without running some analysis on the profiles generated by the first two target scans, you can't really know if they have issues, and if so where & how bad they may be. Thus you can't know if additional target scans could be helpful, and if so which kinds of colour ranges would be needed. Analysis could be either looking at the ICC profiles themselves with some tools like Gamutvision, or by making test prints that can be compared against some known reference.

I find most people probably would be satisfied stopping with Munki profiles generated from the first two target pages. A few times I've seen some incremental improvements by scanning more refinement targets, but likely most people wouldn't see those differences most of the time.

The main issues with Munki profiles are not easily corrected by the Munki software itself. They have to do with some variations from small patch counts, and less than ideal performance in the deepest shadow tones.
Royce Howland
 

by bjs on Tue Jan 28, 2014 9:19 pm
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On my 3880 the regular profile (from the first two target sets) is usually quite good and the optimization runs aren't needed IMO.

Sometimes an issue can be seen and then it can be worth trying one or two optimizations. I found the improvements to be minor though.

One letter size sheet can do the regular profile plus two optimizations. I can't see ever doing more than that.
 

by enrique patino on Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:40 am
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Thanks for your replies...
 

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