What makes the ColorMunki special?

Up until now, you had to be a geek if you wanted to calibrate your printer. It would require meticulously measuring several sheets of hundreds and sometimes even thousands, of small color patches, individually, one at a time. Sounds like fun? Well, maybe if you’re generally very very bored. And, the devices used to measure, often cost quite a lot, if they are of any worthwhile quality.

That was until the ColorMunki came to town. The ColorMunki is based on a spectrophotometer, not the cheaper colorimeter variations that are found in cheaper monitor profiling packages, like DataColor’s Spyder range. The difference is, a spectrophotometer can see color, while a colorimeter consists of several, colorblind sensors, that can each only measure one color. From this, a measurement is calculated.

A spectrophotometer is generally accepted as the more precise instrument to measure color, and the one that can be used to profile printers. The fact that X-Rite has put a good quality spectrophotometer in such an affordable package, is almost revolutionary. At least it is bound to make X-Rite’s only real competitor, DataColor pee in their pants. X-Rite wants to own the color calibration market, both ends, the whole range. And they are already well on their way.

The ColorMunki Photo is also different, because it is affordable, and offers a more intelligent approach. With the ColorMunki you first print one piece of paper, with only 50 patches. These are then swiftly measured in a few sweeps, which will take you less than a minute. Based on the first measurement, the ColorMunki software then calculates the second and final print of 50 additional patches, that are then measured. This is called an iterative process. If you want even better precision, you can optimize your paper profiles using more patches, based on your own images. This is good for skintones, black & white images, etc.

It works very well.