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Author Topic: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...  (Read 4117 times)

Jamooche

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ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« on: September 01, 2011, 12:18:07 pm »

I received my ColorMunki Photo last week and finally got around to setting it up last night.  I have been using the i1 Display 2 for many years, but because I'm switching to the Mac (and I want a printer profiler), I wanted to try the ColorMunki Photo. (I plan on running my new MacBook Air on a Dell u2711 27" display until I can upgrade to the Mac Pros coming out soon).   

Display Calibration: I found the display calibration to be very poor.  I tested this on my PC paired with the Dell 2408.  I set it to factory defaults as per the instructions and ran the calibration.  The first thing I noticed was that my cursor (usually pure white) was now blue.  I reran it several times and it came out the same.  I then set the Contrast to 100%, instead of the default 50%, which the i1 Match had always required.  Still very blue and a terrible profiling.  Even the basic Google.com page looked bad.  I then calibrated with my i1 Display 2 and i1 Match and everything went back to normal. 

Printer Profiling:  I have the Epson R1800 with Epson ink and did the test prints on Epson Enhanced Matte Paper.  I found the colors to be fairly accurate.  Oranges came out slightly red.  The shadow detail, especially in dark greens was poor, but I think this is more a limitation of my printer, inks, and matte paper.  All in all, it was a lot better than I thought with such simple software.  The main problem I have with the printer profiling is that there is no way to manually adjust any of the settings.  They do have an option to print a test chart with colors from a particular image (I haven't tried this yet), but I'd rather not have to do that for every image. 

What to do next? 
I'm thinking to buy the new i1 Display Pro for display calibration.  For printer profiling, I'd love to have the i1Basic Pro, but at $999, the price is a bit steep for a non-pro phtographer.  I am looking at the Spyder3Print SR.  It looks to have good manual controls and can print out many more swatches to read.  I could then sell the ColorMunki on eBay or elsewhere. 

Is the Spyder3Print SR better than the ColorMunki Photo? 

Thanks for any help.

digitaldog

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2011, 12:39:10 pm »

Make sure you don’t have preferences set for V4 profiles. That *might* be the issue with the blue cursor.

In terms of the printer, you might want to do another iteration (more patches).
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Jamooche

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #2 on: September 01, 2011, 12:52:52 pm »

Make sure you don’t have preferences set for V4 profiles. That *might* be the issue with the blue cursor.

In terms of the printer, you might want to do another iteration (more patches).

Thanks.  What version profiles should the preferences be set to?

I just re-read this article:  http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/profiling/colormunki_printing.html  He mentions that the shadows were dark with these profiles. I think I'll try and refine the profile by having it pick colors from several differently colored images and a black and white.  Hopefully this will help open the shadows and fix the slight color variation. 

digitaldog

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #3 on: September 01, 2011, 12:54:07 pm »

V2 profiles.
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Ellis Vener

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #4 on: September 01, 2011, 12:59:22 pm »

I agree with Andrew's recommendation of ICC v2 - as a safer bet if nothing else.
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Ellis Vener

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #5 on: September 01, 2011, 01:00:34 pm »

"Is the Spyder3Print SR better than the ColorMunki Photo?  "

In my experience no it isn't.
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Jamooche

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #6 on: September 01, 2011, 01:04:14 pm »

"Is the Spyder3Print SR better than the ColorMunki Photo?  "

In my experience no it isn't.

Thanks, that's good to know. 

Mac Mahon

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #7 on: September 01, 2011, 03:41:35 pm »

"Is the Spyder3Print SR better than the ColorMunki Photo?  "

In my experience no it isn't.

+1

Tim
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Scott Martin

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Re: ColorMunki Photo - display turns blue...
« Reply #8 on: September 01, 2011, 04:11:15 pm »

Display Calibration: I set it to factory defaults as per the instructions and ran the calibration.  I then set the Contrast to 100%, instead of the default 50%, which the i1 Match had always required. 

After you reset any display to factory defaults, the only control you ever want to mess with is brightness. Ignore any steps that tell you to change Contrast or RGB controls - doing so can kill the calibration process.

Make sure the display contrast isn't bumped up in the "Universal Access" System Preference pane. Also make sure there isn't any other software running that might try to control your video card or display quality. Lastly, use a DVI cable instead of a VGA cable to connect this display, if possible.

And just to add to the discussion about display profiles versioning, I'm see problems with v2 profiles on Vista and Windows 7 machines - v4 profiles are a must for those OSes just like v2 profiles were a must for previous Windows OSes. I haven't seen any problems with V2 or V4 profiles on the Mac but have only minor Lion experience so far. i1Profiler is smart about detecting the OS and recommending the appropriate profile version. I'm not certain if the ColorMunki software is as smart. This is fun dialog but the profile version isn't likely to be the problem on your mac.

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