Jump to content

ColorMunki Smile calibrator


Recommended Posts

Hmmm... I wonder how many Alamy buyers actually work with calibrated monitors. My guess is not very many.

 

Just a passing thought...

 

That may well be true. I guess every customer and contributor gets used to their own monitor (I certainly never realised my original notebook display had such a strong blue cast - until it was too late). Nevertheless, in a highly competitive market, I don't want my pictures ruled out due to a noticeable colour cast relative to images the customer usually looks at in whatever "colour world" they operate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just checked out the features of the Smile compared to their ColorMunki Display (which I have, just over £100).

 

The main issue I noticed is the lack of advanced mode (with the software included). ColorMunki Smile offers Easy Mode only but ColorMunki Display gives Easy & Advanced. The advanced allows you to set the screen brightness & white point i.e. D55 or D65 etc. Advanced allows you to check for screen flare and gives you ambient light monitor as well. The main thing I like is having control over the brightness and colour point and also being able to tell it to colour match another monitor, handy when using a system with 2 or monitors.

 

If you don't need or want the additional controls, I'd imagine easy mode in ColorMunki Smile will be the same as ColorMunki Display.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just checked out the features of the Smile compared to their ColorMunki Display (which I have, just over £100).

 

The main issue I noticed is the lack of advanced mode (with the software included). ColorMunki Smile offers Easy Mode only but ColorMunki Display gives Easy & Advanced. The advanced allows you to set the screen brightness & white point i.e. D55 or D65 etc. Advanced allows you to check for screen flare and gives you ambient light monitor as well. The main thing I like is having control over the brightness and colour point and also being able to tell it to colour match another monitor, handy when using a system with 2 or monitors.

 

If you don't need or want the additional controls, I'd imagine easy mode in ColorMunki Smile will be the same as ColorMunki Display.

 

That's interesting. Given that the ColorMunki display has access to the advanced mode, I wonder what the difference is between the X-Rite ColorMunki Display (£139 on Amazon) and the X-Rite i1 Display Pro (£199 on Amazon) is? The hardware looks very similar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Just checked out the features of the Smile compared to their ColorMunki Display (which I have, just over £100).

 

The main issue I noticed is the lack of advanced mode (with the software included). ColorMunki Smile offers Easy Mode only but ColorMunki Display gives Easy & Advanced. The advanced allows you to set the screen brightness & white point i.e. D55 or D65 etc. Advanced allows you to check for screen flare and gives you ambient light monitor as well. The main thing I like is having control over the brightness and colour point and also being able to tell it to colour match another monitor, handy when using a system with 2 or monitors.

 

If you don't need or want the additional controls, I'd imagine easy mode in ColorMunki Smile will be the same as ColorMunki Display.

 

That's interesting. Given that the ColorMunki display has access to the advanced mode, I wonder what the difference is between the X-Rite ColorMunki Display (£139 on Amazon) and the X-Rite i1 Display Pro (£199 on Amazon) is? The hardware looks very similar.

 

A quick Google confirms what I remember from researching this some time ago - it's mostly the software (the makers say the X-Rite i1 is faster, but another site says this is down to the software). DisplayCAL + Argyle CMS work with both - so you can probably get just as good results out of the cheaper hardware if you go down that path. I believe you can try DisplayCAL etc for free, so it might be worth giving it a go. 

 

Links to what I found on Google: 

http://blog.xritephoto.com/2012/11/colormunki-display-or-i1display-pro/

http://nativedigital.co.uk/site/2011/06/colormunki-display-i1-display-pro-whats-the-difference/

https://displaycal.net/

 

Hope that helps! 

David. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Just checked out the features of the Smile compared to their ColorMunki Display (which I have, just over £100).

 

The main issue I noticed is the lack of advanced mode (with the software included). ColorMunki Smile offers Easy Mode only but ColorMunki Display gives Easy & Advanced. The advanced allows you to set the screen brightness & white point i.e. D55 or D65 etc. Advanced allows you to check for screen flare and gives you ambient light monitor as well. The main thing I like is having control over the brightness and colour point and also being able to tell it to colour match another monitor, handy when using a system with 2 or monitors.

 

If you don't need or want the additional controls, I'd imagine easy mode in ColorMunki Smile will be the same as ColorMunki Display.

 

That's interesting. Given that the ColorMunki display has access to the advanced mode, I wonder what the difference is between the X-Rite ColorMunki Display (£139 on Amazon) and the X-Rite i1 Display Pro (£199 on Amazon) is? The hardware looks very similar.

 

 

Wex UK is cheaper, £119 for the ColorMunki Display.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Just checked out the features of the Smile compared to their ColorMunki Display (which I have, just over £100).

 

The main issue I noticed is the lack of advanced mode (with the software included). ColorMunki Smile offers Easy Mode only but ColorMunki Display gives Easy & Advanced. The advanced allows you to set the screen brightness & white point i.e. D55 or D65 etc. Advanced allows you to check for screen flare and gives you ambient light monitor as well. The main thing I like is having control over the brightness and colour point and also being able to tell it to colour match another monitor, handy when using a system with 2 or monitors.

 

If you don't need or want the additional controls, I'd imagine easy mode in ColorMunki Smile will be the same as ColorMunki Display.

 

That's interesting. Given that the ColorMunki display has access to the advanced mode, I wonder what the difference is between the X-Rite ColorMunki Display (£139 on Amazon) and the X-Rite i1 Display Pro (£199 on Amazon) is? The hardware looks very similar.

 

A quick Google confirms what I remember from researching this some time ago - it's mostly the software (the makers say the X-Rite i1 is faster, but another site says this is down to the software). DisplayCAL + Argyle CMS work with both - so you can probably get just as good results out of the cheaper hardware if you go down that path. I believe you can try DisplayCAL etc for free, so it might be worth giving it a go. 

 

Links to what I found on Google: 

http://blog.xritephoto.com/2012/11/colormunki-display-or-i1display-pro/

http://nativedigital.co.uk/site/2011/06/colormunki-display-i1-display-pro-whats-the-difference/

https://displaycal.net/

 

Hope that helps! 

David. 

 

 

Excellent links - thanks. It looks like if I was buying again I'd probably go for ColorMunki Display with DisplayCal + Argyll CMS. I've used this software before with my X-Rite Pro 1. It works well. In fact allowed me to produce a better profile for my Notebook than X-Rite did. My Notebook display had a blue cast in the deep shadows. X-Rite corrected this by adding red and green to give a neutral dark grey. As a consequence reducing the contrast of the display significantly. DisplayCal allowed me to override this allowing me to maintain the contrast whilst tolerating the (barely) noticeable blue cast in the shadows.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I went ahead and ordered the Colormunki Smile from amazon UK since I had the £100 gift voucher to spend and nothing to lose really. I still even have £15 left after purchasing the Munki!

 

Anyway, I'll report back in a few weeks regarding the ColorMunki's effectiveness (or lack thereof). Hopefully, I'll be smiling. If not, the Munki goes straight to craigslist...

 

Thanks for all the helpful feedback.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I went ahead and ordered the Colormunki Smile from amazon UK since I had the £100 gift voucher to spend and nothing to lose really. I still even have £15 left after purchasing the Munki!

 

Anyway, I'll report back in a few weeks regarding the ColorMunki's effectiveness (or lack thereof). Hopefully, I'll be smiling. If not, the Munki goes straight to craigslist...

 

Thanks for all the helpful feedback.

I'd imagine it will work just fine, it's just that you can't tweak the output. When using Advanced settings, it states D65 white balance is the recommended so easy mode will use that.... it will either use 120 cd/m2 brightness or, native brightness of the screen. In either event, you'll be able to alter this from the monitor itself. And.... most importantly, it will be better than not having it at all, it will colour balance your screen which is what you want :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I went ahead and ordered the Colormunki Smile from amazon UK since I had the £100 gift voucher to spend and nothing to lose really. I still even have £15 left after purchasing the Munki!

 

Anyway, I'll report back in a few weeks regarding the ColorMunki's effectiveness (or lack thereof). Hopefully, I'll be smiling. If not, the Munki goes straight to craigslist...

 

Thanks for all the helpful feedback.

I'd imagine it will work just fine, it's just that you can't tweak the output. When using Advanced settings, it states D65 white balance is the recommended so easy mode will use that.... it will either use 120 cd/m2 brightness or, native brightness of the screen. In either event, you'll be able to alter this from the monitor itself. And.... most importantly, it will be better than not having it at all, it will colour balance your screen which is what you want :)

 

 

I hope so. As mentioned, my monitor has been calibrated but some time ago.

 

An interesting aside. The ColorMunki Smile was listed at £79 on the amazon UK website. However, when I went to the checkout, I was redirected to the amazon EU website and was charged only £65. I wonder if Mr. Farage knows about this? B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

UPDATE: The ColorMunki Smile arrived today, almost a week early. Installation of the software was hassle-free. The device is indeed very easy to use, and everything appeared to go fine. The before and after views showed that the colours on my monitor were a bit too warm, which is what I suspected. Brightness looks to be about the same as before calibration. This budget-priced gizmo does appear to do the job (if basic). Of course I don't have anything to compare the results with.

 

I'm using Windows 7 Pro. I've read online that there have been some installation issues with Windows 10. However, a downloadable fix is supposedly available.

 

So, there you go. I'm smiling so far. B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

UPDATE: The ColorMunki Smile arrived today, almost a week early. Installation of the software was hassle-free. The device is indeed very easy to use, and everything appeared to go fine. The before and after views showed that the colours on my monitor were a bit too warm, which is what I suspected. Brightness looks to be about the same as before calibration. This budget-priced gizmo does appear to do the job (if basic). Of course I don't have anything to compare the results with.

 

I'm using Windows 7 Pro. I've read online that there have been some installation issues with Windows 10. However, a downloadable fix is supposedly available.

 

So, there you go. I'm smiling so far. B)

 

That's good news. It may be worth checking your new profile is actually being loaded when you reboot or wake from sleep/hibernation. There are some settings in the Color Management settings of Windows 7 that need to have been set correctly. These should have been set automatically. See info here. I know there were problems with early versions of Windows 7 with some devices but don't know if they fixed them in later releases. There's quite a lot of info on the web about problems in this area. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

UPDATE: The ColorMunki Smile arrived today, almost a week early. Installation of the software was hassle-free. The device is indeed very easy to use, and everything appeared to go fine. The before and after views showed that the colours on my monitor were a bit too warm, which is what I suspected. Brightness looks to be about the same as before calibration. This budget-priced gizmo does appear to do the job (if basic). Of course I don't have anything to compare the results with.

 

I'm using Windows 7 Pro. I've read online that there have been some installation issues with Windows 10. However, a downloadable fix is supposedly available.

 

So, there you go. I'm smiling so far. B)

 

That's good news. It may be worth checking your new profile is actually being loaded when you reboot or wake from sleep/hibernation. There are some settings in the Color Management settings of Windows 7 that need to have been set correctly. These should have been set automatically. See info here. I know there were problems with early versions of Windows 7 with some devices but don't know if they fixed them in later releases. There's quite a lot of info on the web about problems in this area. 

 

 

Thanks for the link. I had a look at the article, but I have to admit that it's total Greek to me. I'll have to do some poking around the Web to see if I can find something comprehensible.

 

This kind of stuff gives me a headache. :unsure:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

UPDATE: The ColorMunki Smile arrived today, almost a week early. Installation of the software was hassle-free. The device is indeed very easy to use, and everything appeared to go fine. The before and after views showed that the colours on my monitor were a bit too warm, which is what I suspected. Brightness looks to be about the same as before calibration. This budget-priced gizmo does appear to do the job (if basic). Of course I don't have anything to compare the results with.

 

I'm using Windows 7 Pro. I've read online that there have been some installation issues with Windows 10. However, a downloadable fix is supposedly available.

 

So, there you go. I'm smiling so far. B)

 

That's good news. It may be worth checking your new profile is actually being loaded when you reboot or wake from sleep/hibernation. There are some settings in the Color Management settings of Windows 7 that need to have been set correctly. These should have been set automatically. See info here. I know there were problems with early versions of Windows 7 with some devices but don't know if they fixed them in later releases. There's quite a lot of info on the web about problems in this area. 

 

 

Thanks for the link. I had a look at the article, but I have to admit that it's total Greek to me. I'll have to do some poking around the Web to see if I can find something comprehensible.

 

This kind of stuff gives me a headache. :unsure:

 

 

UPDATE: I had another look at the article, and I think that I might have figured it out. Everything seems OK on my machine -- i.e. all the relevant boxes appear to be checked.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

 

UPDATE: The ColorMunki Smile arrived today, almost a week early. Installation of the software was hassle-free. The device is indeed very easy to use, and everything appeared to go fine. The before and after views showed that the colours on my monitor were a bit too warm, which is what I suspected. Brightness looks to be about the same as before calibration. This budget-priced gizmo does appear to do the job (if basic). Of course I don't have anything to compare the results with.

 

I'm using Windows 7 Pro. I've read online that there have been some installation issues with Windows 10. However, a downloadable fix is supposedly available.

 

So, there you go. I'm smiling so far. B)

 

That's good news. It may be worth checking your new profile is actually being loaded when you reboot or wake from sleep/hibernation. There are some settings in the Color Management settings of Windows 7 that need to have been set correctly. These should have been set automatically. See info here. I know there were problems with early versions of Windows 7 with some devices but don't know if they fixed them in later releases. There's quite a lot of info on the web about problems in this area. 

 

 

Thanks for the link. I had a look at the article, but I have to admit that it's total Greek to me. I'll have to do some poking around the Web to see if I can find something comprehensible.

 

This kind of stuff gives me a headache. :unsure:

 

 

UPDATE: I had another look at the article, and I think that I might have figured it out. Everything seems OK on my machine -- i.e. all the relevant boxes appear to be checked.

 

 

Good oh!. Once these are set correctly, the only problems I had occurred when connecting and disconnecting an external monitor to my notebook whilst it was running. I had calibrated both my Notebook and external display separately with my X-Rite Display i1 Pro, and had differently named profiles for each. Usually Windows 7 would load the right profile depending on which display I was using, but occasionally it would get confused and use the wrong profile. To fix it I had to reboot, or disconnect and reconnect the external display. In the end I used some sort of Look Up Table (LUT) inspector exe I found on-line so I could check which profile was loaded which was easy because the profiles for the two displays were very different.

 

I'm now using a MacBook with OS-X sometimes with an external monitor, and all such problems seem to have disappeared.... It just works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.