Pantone ColorMunki Design
by Pantone
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List Price: Our Price: $423.99 You Save: $26.00 (6%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $400.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Pantone ColorMunki Design
Customer Review: Software on vista is crap
Summary: 2 Stars
I had high hopes for this product for all it's supposed to be able to do. The calibration portion and hardware works fine, however I can't get the Design software to function properly. The program installs initially and then won't open. I can see the process running but the app never opens. They recently released a new version of the Design sftware and that starts to open but all I get is the frame of the window and it never progresses beyond that. X-rite support has been worse then useless and unresponsive.Customer Review: Poor software, doesn't work on three different computers
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought ColorMunki Design back in April. Installing the software takes forever since X-rite includes a long installation of Net Framework. And every incremental upgrade requires a bloated download including the Net Framework and the very slow installation. I'm a long time customer of Monaco (acquired by X-rite) and of X-rite using their excellent i1 2 display profile system with Eye-One Match software. I assumed ColorMunki would be as good as other highly regarded Xrite products but with more versatility. I was sadly wrong.
My first contact with X-rite support was regarding the registration process that wasn't working as it was supposed to. After getting the product registered, I was able to run display calibration with a decidedly pink cast. I was able to use the colorimeter to sample object colors and calibrate a digital projector via a notebook computer. But the profiles all had a pink cast. After updating my display card's driver, I found ColorMunki refused to complete a display profile. The process would hang, and I contacted Xrite support who provided personal service but without ever being very effective. They ended up providing a registry toggle that turned off my NEC display's hardware profiling feature. That eventually got display profiling to function, but still with a pink tint that was obviously bad for the target color temperature. The software for display profiling is poor. You can choose the basic "easy" mode with little control over the profiling parameters. If you choose advanced, the software insists on measuring ambient light to set your display's brightness. If you work where ambient lighting doesn't change during the day, that's a workable limitation. But if you don't, you had better profile the display during the brightest part of your day or you'll be working with a display that's too dim. Since the product was brand new to the market, I took a "wait and see perspective" and hoped that updates would fix profile accuracy an offer better user control.
I discovered that the display driver I had been using had a bug that interfered with my NEC display's hardware calibration and passed that information along to X-rite support. A new driver fixed that bug, and X-rite has an update to ColorMunki so I decided to give it another try for profiling. This time, I started to get erratic behavior from ColorMunki. Sometimes a profile would run normally, but still pink. But other times the device wouldn't be recognized, or the process would hang. I tried different USB ports, and cables and eventually was sent a replacement colorimeter by X-rite support.
I had given up on using ColorMunki for display calibration by that time. I had my i1 colorimeter to fall back on so I decided to keep ColorMunki for color swatch sampling and perhaps eventually doing printer profiling for specialy paper. But I found that I couldn't get the ColorMunki software to recognize the ColorMunki device on either my workstation or my notebook computer. I contacted X-rite support and downloaded a couple of software updates.
As of today, I can't get the ColorMunki device to be recognized on three different computers. I'm trying to get a response from X-rite support, but they've become hard to find via the website (which now has an extensive troubleshooting section) and they don't return my emails. I've been not only patient but have done my best to help X-rite support with detailed descriptions and screen shots to help them sort out problems. My patience is gone and I not only want a refund or replacement with a different X-rite product, I also want to warn others that ColorMunki is an inferior product, that's ineffectively supported. I say that as a graphic designer with over a decade of display profiling experience using excellent tools from Monaco and X-rite.
The ColorMunki device itself is versatile, but very clumsy to use for display profiling. I find that it's very easy to accidentally press the large button area in the center hub as I try to rotate the device through its self-calibration position to it's display measurement position. The colorimeter comes with a neoprene case and weighted strap that are awkward to use as you dangle the device in front of the display.
If the software was as advanced as Eye-One Match and created accurate profiles, the clumsy design would be a fair tradeoff for versatility. For me, the device fails at its most basic job of providing accurate color profiling, and X-rite has failed to get this relatively expensive package working on any of my computers.
For display profiling, choose i1 Display 2 while it's available. If you run 90 series NEC displays, choose NEC's SpectraView II to unlock the full performance of your hardware, including hardware profiling. Avoid junk like X-rite's Huey (note all the reviews that describe pink profiles - I have to believe that the same incompetence is at work on Huey and ColorMunki). It pains me to see X-rite fall down so badly after serving the market well for so long.
Customer Review: No support form x-rite.
Summary: 1 Stars
It has been over a year since x-rite has updated the software or fixed bugs. I believe that x-rite is no longer supporting this product. Do not buy it!