A spectrophotometer measures luminous energy throughout the spectrum. Note the USB cable connected to the device and the small button on the side at that corner to release the spot measurement target.Ī colorimeter measures luminous energy in the visible spectrum using three (or more) filters, much like the sensor on a digital camera. While the process of creating a monitor profile (the chief use of these things) is similar for the Pantone hueyPRO, Datacolor Spyder3 and X-Rite ColorMunki, the ColorMunki is a different beast than the other two. For a printer, it involves the paper and ink combination as well as other print settings like resolution.
On a monitor that involves the ambient light, the contrast and brightness, as well as the innate display properties of the LCD or CRT itself.
Profiles describe what colors your device can display.
THE MEAT OF THE MATTER | Back to Contentsīuilding ICC profiles (ColorSync profiles on the Mac or Image Color Management profiles in Windows) is what this game is all about. Delicious, satisfying, lip-smacking gravy. But X-Rite provides a helping hand with video links on almost every page of the software, a call center to answer any questions you might have and an interactive, Flash-based, training video (available in six languages).Īnd the rest is just gravy. There are a lot of pitfalls that can invalidate the profile.
Profiling a monitor using a hardware device has gotten a lot easier, with software getting smarter and smarter, not to mention more and more helpful.īuilding a printer profile - which is really a profile of a printer's inks and a particular paper - is not quite as easy. Just in front is the sandbag weight and the USB connection. Wrapped in its protective case, the rotary mode dial remains accessible. It has a few other tricks up its sleeve, including fine tuning display profiles for a preferred gamut, automatically configuring applications to use a specific printer profile, extracting color from an image, capturing any color from any surface and previewing a PrintSafe color palette.ĬolorMunki. And it can calibrate itself without resorting to any external references.īut that's not all. We mean ColorMunki Photo can not only profile your monitors (compensating for ambient light) but it can build ICC profiles for printer/paper/ink combinations and profile projectors. So what do we mean when we say the ColorMunki Photo can do it all? The company also offers the ColorMunki Design aimed at graphic designers and a less expensive ColorMunki Create that is not the same device as the Photo and Design models ( see comparison table), which are nearly equivalent except for printer profile enhancement options and the inclusion of DigitalPouch in the Photo version.