Accurate repro of colors in fine art, for my customers, means when they bring me a watercolor painting, and I create a print of that painting, that one can placed the print on top of the painting and the colors in the print match the colors in the painting.
No, the colorchecker passport is probably not meant specifically for this type of work. That's why I started this thread. All one has to do to see what the colorchecker passport is marketed towards is to watch the company's own training video. The company rep states it's to make colors "pop out" and be "richer...more elegant." Can't get much more subjective than that!
In all honesty had I watched the video I probably would not have purchased. It's not a good way to demonstrate how accurate your color management tool is when the video used to demo the tool uses granny's flowers as the demo subject. The color could be off by a mile and granny's flowers would still "pop out."
So, as I stated, I've identified some faults for my current use, but even in my commercial work, I don't consider adding saturation to an image to make it "pop out" desirable or even tolerable. Great for granny's flowers. Not necessarily good for mixed lighting architectural interiors. Certainly not a default I want to apply to every image. Like I said, it's easy enough to edit those drawbacks out. For repro of fine art, so far, I'm looking at removing 8-10 pts. of saturation from the colorchecker profile.
I'm going to continue to go through some more paintings. Right now I stand by that this tool, while useful, considering the seller recommends buying one every two years, should probably carry a price tag of no more than $40. Definitely stand by that the software needs some work, but realistically anyone using this is going to have to edit and create their own presets anyway, so I suppose it falls under the heading of "good enough." The company must feel the same way as they haven't updated the software in over 18 months.
The first painting was a bear by any standard. I'm going to give it a full run through with the work I have to complete, so I will withhold final judgment on whether to return it or not until I've done several more paintings. Now that I've identified the saturation problem, my workflow is speeding up. I also have a commercial architectural shoot at a hospital on Monday, so I'm going to give the colorchecker a run through there in some mixed lighting situations.