Veerle's blog

Color management, it sounds complicated and technical and it is one of the most difficult aspects of graphic design. Getting color right early in the workflow, and keeping it right to the end, is increasingly critical. It is not easy to get color right across all media and as a designer we deal with this almost daily. Consistency at every step of the workflow—from capture to computer screen to ink on paper can be though when each camera, scanner, and printer records or outputs colors a bit differently.

Colorsync

First a bit of introduction to how it works if you have a Macintosh. On Mac there is a care taker called ColorSync that manages your color workflow. ColorSync is Apple’s universal color translator that delivers color across devices and at all stages of production. You may have heard about ICC. ICC stands for The International Color Consortium and was founded by Apple and seven other vendors in 1993 to address the issue that every device has its own unique color capabilities. ColorSync is Apple’s implementation of the ICC specification, providing system-level color management of images, documents, and devices. Of course this isn't magical that everything is just right out of the box, it's close but you'll need more to be very accurate.

Calibrating and Profiling Your Display

Pictures on your screen look different from what they do in print. What you need to do is calibrate your monitor so that it simulates what you would see on paper. Both are different because monitors use red, green and blue (RGB) to display the color gamut, while printers use cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) inks. The Mac always had built in support for calibration, it is found under System Preferences > Displays > Color. Calibrating this way is ok but if you want things to be really accurate you need to resort to hardware.

The tool that we are going to talk about is a spectrophotometer. Spectrophotometers are used to calibrate and profile displays, and they are also useful for creating profiles for output devices such as printers. All this can become very technical and complicated and it is here that the ColorMunki Design from Pantone tries to make this easier for us and one of the reasons why Pantone mailed me one to test it out.

ColorMunki Design

The ColorMunki Design is a complete color management and measurement system in a box that tries to take all the heavy lifting out of your hands. It consists of a spectrophotometer that calibrates your monitor and that also can be used to profile your projector and printer. You can also capture any color from any item. ColorMunki Design also has a software part where you manage the color palettes and where you import your colors and sync them to Illustrator or Photoshop for example. That's the introduction part now let's see if it is a joy to use.

Calibrating my Cinema Display

The first thing that you'll notice when you unwrap the package is the measurement device, the spectrophotometer that we referred to above. The industrial design of the device looks nice and it shows that they thought about it so that it would appeal to the designer. It comes with a protective cover that also serves as counterweight when you are calibrating and profiling your display. The strap is filled with sand I think. At the bottom of the protective cover there is a slider so that you can reveal the eye that does the measurements. If you forget to open it you'll get a failed profile, but the application tells you you need to look at the slider as one of the possible reasons. Connecting the device worked flawlessly every time on my Cinema Display but on our MacBook with a Dell 24" the USB device sometimes didn't get recognized at first try. When you opt to profile your display the first thing you do is choose which type of device you are going to profile. See screenshot below.

I choose LCD and the easy option. You have an advanced setting too where you can play with your screen built in contrast and brightness etc. I opted for the easy option since the Cinema Display doesn't have a contrast button. The next screen you'll get is the ColorMunki status.

The measurement device has a large rotating knob with a press button at one side and you need to rotate the knob into the right position. It is clearly explained on screen what you need to do but if you are still unsure you can watch a video that shows how. You first move it to the calibrate position and if it is in the right spot you'll see a glowing button Calibrate.

After calibrating the device you'll have to move the knob to the ready to measure position. Turning the plastic wheel is a bit difficult for me as you don't have much grip on the plastic surface. There are bumps on the wheel but to me they are not tall enough to allow a good grip and I accidentally pushed the button as well by trying to turn it on a few occasions. These are only minor usability disappointments because the device itself works like it should.

The final step is to place the measurement device on your screen and situate it in the area as shown on the screen.

The ColorMunki does not always line up properly without exerting a light pressure. The protective cover is not flat on the surface of the screen. You have to make sure the usb cable and strap are correctly positioned to get a perfect fit. Lowering the device a bit can help with that. Once you start the calibration you'll see colors pass on the screen.

Once the profile is completed you can set a reminder to profile the screen again. I've set mine every 3 weeks. In the next screen you can see a before and after calibration. My screen is already old and when I wait long to calibrate it there can be a huge difference. Mostly it has a yellowish tint. It is amazing what a difference it can make. The whole process only takes a few minutes.

Capturing colors

This is the part that got me excited and it perhaps is one of the more useful features of the device. You can really capture color from virtually any surface. For example you received a magazine with some nice colors in it, all you need to do is set the device on top of anything with color and push the button on the side and the color will be added to a new palette. The best part is that you aren't limited to ink on paper. You can scan fabric, color of your wall, etc. It's very accurate in representing the colors that I scanned.

ColorMunki Design Software

The software was a bit of a surprise for me as it actually feels Mac like. That hasn't always been the case for Pantone as you'll remember from my Pantone Goe article. Let's take a closer look at the features.

Libraries

When you fire up the software you'll see the Libraries section on the right and you get three libraries by default: Color Groups, Munsell Glossy and Pantone Goe Coated. When you register the software, you also get Pantone Solid Coated, Matte and Uncoated. Selecting a color from one of the libraries shows it in a grid and a CoverFlow style.

Color Information

On the left you have the Color Information which contains name, Lab and sRGB values, HTML and CMYK are empty and I couldn't figure out a way to show them. If you double click the swatch Apple Color opens and from there you can select the CMYK option to see the value. I thought when I click OK in the palette the values would be entered in the Color Information, but it's not.

Color tags

It took me some time to figure out how you could add tags. I went through all the menus but there wasn't a clue there. Turns out that you have to actually just type there. There isn't any visual indication that you can, you only notice it when you click in that area and it becomes a blinking text cursor. Would have been better if Pantone used the Apple way of adding tags like you see below and that there is an indicator that you can add them.

Relations & Proofing

When you have a color selected the ColorMunki software creates color palettes based on harmony, variation and similar colors. Under Harmony you have monochromatic, analagous, split complement, triadic and complement colors. In addition, you get variations (lighter, darker, more vibrant and so on) and 'similar' colors from the different libraries. Proofing is the place where you get to see a preview on how it would look under certain conditions. Under Lighting you see a preview on how it would look when using a Viewing Booth (D50), Daylight (D65), Home (Tungsten), and Store (Fluorescent). PrintSafe is where you check how it would look on a certain printing standard such as Euroscale Uncoated v2 for example. When a color isn't possible under that standard that particular color is greyed out so that it saves you from making that mistake to use it.

Resources

Collorati collection

Under Resources you'll find the Coloratti collection. It is a bunch of photos to show that ColorMunki design extracts colors automatically from those shots. Seeing this collection made me wonder if I can create my own collection. Unfortunately that's not the case as it took me some detective work to find out where the program stores these images. Apparently they are in the resources folder of the application itself so there is no way you can add your own. That's a bit of shame if you ask me because it would make sense that you could place a folder containing images somewhere on your internal or external HD and just point to it when you create a new collection of photos with interesting colors. This way you would control where the content is and that's what I would prefer. I don't like it when there are folders all over the place because you are forced using it that way. What would be even sweeter is a way to point to your flickr set or any picture that you come across when browsing Flickr for example.

Display Profiling

This is where you will go to if you want to profile your monitor. See the review of that aspect above if you skipped it.

ColorMunki Online

The online community is where you share your palettes with another users. Personally this aspect doesn't speak to me that much as there are already others like Adobe Kuler. I think it would be a better idea if there was a collaboration between Adobe Kuler or colorlovers etc. Another thing that was a bit weird is when I see an interesting color palette online and I download it to be imported in to ColorMunki there was a substancial color difference. You can see an example of this below.

Printer Profiling

When you choose printer profiling the software will print out a test chart of 5 strips of color. You have to scan those colors with the measurement device. This isn't difficult, all you need to do is move the device over these bars of color that are shown on the screen. The software will tell you if the scan is succeeded (by highlighting the strip), so if you moved too fast you'll get an alert (a red square). Once you went over all colors successfully your printer will print out a second chart of 5 strips of color based on the measurements of the first batch to test the nuance colors. When all that is calculated you'll get a unique profile for your printer. One thing to remember is that you need to create a profile for each kind of paper you are using because color gets affected by the kind of paper it is printed on.

iPhoto Library

Another way to use pictures is to use your iPhoto library. I've set up a new album called ColorMunki in it but unfortunately the connection between the two isn't in real time as the album didn't show up in ColorMunki. I've searched for a refresh command but couldn't find one so the only way to view the new album was to quit the application and restart it. Not exactly what you call ideal. Another minor disappointment is when you select a photo from your album and you create a new palette from the selection it doesn't take the name from the picture but throws up an untitled instead. The software gives you the 12 strongest colors but if you want another you have to double click the photo and select an area where you want to pick a color. You can drag that to your palette. To me it would have made more sense to use an eye dropper instead of cross hair icon.

Projects

You can add pictures to ColorMunki by dragging and dropping but they are stored under projects. It would have made more sense if they where stored in sets like the Colorati collection. If you add a photo this way and you delete it ColorMunki will remember the color palette but the CoverFlow like preview will be broken. It will not show the colors just a default document icon. I also wish I could change/control (drag/move) the order of the Projects.

At the bottom left you have an area that gives you some extra information and some options concerning arrangement. You can sort colors by default, by name, by categorie, by luminance, and by similarity. The snap to drop down is the way to find the closest color in one of the Pantone libraries or one of the profiles that your have on your Mac or PC. The sync checkbox is there to sync your color palettes to your favorite application.

Final thoughts

It really is a nice software/harware combo that could have a great future if the software part matures nicely. Now it is ok but it has performance issues. I've tested it on a PowerMac Dual 2.7Ghz with 2.5GB RAM and on a MacBook 2Ghz Core Duo with 2GB Ram and on both machines it takes up all processing power when doing simple taks like browsing around. You can see that in the screenshot below taken from Geert's MacBook.

So it needs some optimisation to make it run smoothly. Since it is only version 1 there is time to improve it further and make it an essential tool in the inspiration process. If these things get improved in the next version I would really recommend this to a fellow designer. ColorMunki comes in three flavors, ColorMunki Create, ColorMunki Design, and ColorMunki Photo.