This is the sort of issue that results in lost print contracts and difficult working relations between graphic designers and their print suppliers. While designers and print buyers have become increasingly colour critical, many of them often have little knowledge of the print process and scant understanding of colour management.The above scenario is exactly the sort of problem that the ColorMunki colour management system is designed to iron out, bridging the gap between what a designer expects and what can actually be reproduced. It may change the way designers think about colour, helping an “audience that knows they need to manage colour but don’t have the technical understanding to do this”, explains Helmut Eifert, vice- president, channel sales, EMEA, Pantone and X-Rite.There is a lot of expectation surrounding the product as it’s the first launch since X-Rite bought Pantone last November. The companies hope the ColorMunki will be the first truly easy-to-use colour-accurate specification and selection tool for the creative community, and its modest price tag of £319 makes it an even more attractive prospect for designers.As an entry-level product it is mainly aimed at graphic designers, small to medium-sized companies, and photographers all dealing with colour, but its low cost has also attracted interest from the repro community.
Keep it simple
Launched just ahead of Drupa, with the show being its first public outing, ColorMunki essentially tries to get designers used to the concept of spectrophotometry and profiling. “There are comparable products out there,” explains Pantone’s Eifert, but apart from costing around £750, he believes that they are too technical for most print buyers. In addition to its attractive price, Eifert is bullish about the product’s prospects as he feels that it has the ability to transform the industry through its ease of use. “It’s important to have because it’s the only device that can behave in the same way as the human eye so designers can ask ‘what is the colour I’m working with from a technical perspective?’ and not be confronted with a lot of complicated technical information,” claims Eifert. “But printers need to know what colour designers are talking about at a technical level,” he continues. “And it’s good for designers because they can see instantly – ‘Can I match these colours on the printing press later on? Does this appear differently on a different substrate without having any technical understanding?’”ColorMunki’s software is easy to navigate and allows users to calibrate monitors, printers and projectors for accurate display-to-print matching and spot colour verification. Before and after screens also allow users to view the effects of their new display profile.
Munki business
For profiling a digital projector, the ‘advanced’ mode allows you to adjust the target white point and provides some helpful illustrations for measuring ambient light levels to optimise your display settings. Print profiling is done by printing a test chart, which is then scanned using the ColorMunki unit. If you make a mistake (scanning too quickly, for example), the unit flashes red and remains in the same position to allow you to rescan. Once scanned, the Munki will generate a second test chart with which to repeat the process. The final calculations can then be saved and can be used in Adobe Creative Suite or QuarkXPress. While ColorMunki’s fundamental aim is to allow users to manage colour there are some other nifty things it can do, including interesting features for creating and verifying colours. This is where the collaboration between Pantone and X-Rite comes into its own. For instance, the Munki can be used to capture colours from any substrate in the real world – for example, I used it to capture the colour of the petals of the African violets on my desk. It extracted the very deep purple colour and automatically created a palette of harmonious colours and shade variations. A word of warning, however – the Munki must be connected to a computer, so if you want to wander around Kew Gardens extracting vivid colours from exotic plants, you’ll need a laptop. Handy features allow you to verify the colour by evaluating it under different light sources such as daylight (D65) and store (fluorescent). The PrintSafe feature also allows you to see whether your spot colour can be accurately reproduced to certain standards. The colour of the petals of my African violet, sadly, can only be reproduced using US Sheetfed Coated v2 colour profile, it seems, and will not be available under my desired Europe ISO Coated Fogra27. The ‘Snap To’ icon shows how the colour will look when printed using certain profiles. For example, the African violet’s petals will be redder in tone when printed using an HP Indigo 5000.Another nifty option is the ability to scan printed or electronic images to create a colour palette capturing up to 12 different colours within that image. These new colours can be added to other software applications. Users can also share colour palettes online, via the ColorMunki website, or browse the pantone library for similar colours.Because of the software’s versatile colour creation features it has already attracted a broad customer base, according to Javan Bramhall, sales and marketing manager at Colour Confidence, one of X-Rite’s master distributors. “The message at the moment is that it’s increasingly popular in the design industry and we have also had printers and publishers buying it,” he says. The deciding factor for purchasers will undoubtedly be its user-friendliness, compared with some of the more technically challenging alternatives. There’s no denying that a spectrophotometer priced so cheaply will prompt many people to dip into their pockets and take a punt on such a device.It has already achieved impressive sales of around 16,000 units since April when it was launched. Of these sales 51% were in Europe with 30% in the UK. The figures also show that a few printers are buying it – perhaps out of curiosity?ColorMunki’s future looks extremely positive in a market that is hungry for better colour management. “Our mission is to address, at the early stages of a workflow, the need for a designer to measure colour and provide highly accurate information. If people are working in a colour workflow they need to make sure that all the technical values are as they should be,” says Pantone’s Eifert. It also helps that, when features are set against price, there are so few direct competitors.
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SPECIFICATIONS
Device spectrophotometer
Calibration printer, monitor, projector
Colour patches 50x50Reading technique continuous measurement, strip-by-strip
Price £319
Contact Pantone; 00 49 711 664 75990;
www.colormunki.com
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THE ALTERNATIVES
DataColor Spyder3 Studio
The Spdyer3 Studio uses two devices: the Spyder3 Elite and Spyder3 Print. Spyder3 Elite’s screen calibration includes advanced controls for display optimisation during calibration, and allows you to measure ambient light with different brightness levels of your monitor. The Spyder3 Print can profile 150, 225, and 729 colour patches but users can increase the measurement points around the grey axis adding 238 black and white patches.
Device spectrocolorimeter
Calibration printer, monitor, projector
Colour patches up to 967
Reading technique patch-by-patch measurement
Price £390
Contact Datacolor; 00800 700 800 70;
www.datacolor.com
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X-Rite i1Display2
The i1Display 2 is a monitor calibration device, with advanced options, for display optimisation during calibration, ambient light check, and monitor profile evaluation using Delta E values. This is a monitor calibration device only and will not calibrate printers.
Device colorimeter
Calibration monitor
Colour patches none
Reading technique n/a
Price £125
Contact X-Rite; 01625 871100;
http://shop.colourconfidence.com/
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Pantone HueyPro
A monitor calibration system allowing you to share photos and other graphics between monitors or upload them to web sites.
Device colorimeter
Calibration monitor
Colour patches none
Reading technique n/a
Price £88
Contact Pantone; 00 49 711 6647 5990;
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