63 — Review of the Colormunki and the i1XTreme

March 20, 2009 By 7 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #63 fea­tures a review of the Col­or­munki and the i1XTreme monitor/printer/projector pro­fil­ing sys­tems. These are hard­ware sys­tems that use a spec­tropho­tome­ter to mea­sure the color from hard­ware devices like mon­i­tors, print­ers, pro­jec­tors (and in the case of the i1XTreme, scan­ners and cam­eras as well). So many of us are print­ing from our homes, offices or home-offices and we want accu­rate colours from our RGB or CMYK print­ers. These hard­ware devices absolutely sim­plify this extremely con­fus­ing process and both prod­ucts come highly rec­om­mended. After the review, we ask Joe Brady of MAC­grou­pUS in a tele­phone inter­view, to clar­ify what we need to do in Photoshop’s print­ing dia­logue boxes to assure us of a good mon­i­tor to printer print. This is a com­mon area of con­fu­sion for many pho­tog­ra­phers try­ing to print on their own printers.

UPDATE — In the pod­cast I say that the Col­or­Munki is restricted to use on 3 mon­i­tors. This restric­tion has been lifted.

The ColorMunki

The Col­or­Munki

i1Xtreme

i1Xtreme

Photoshops dialogue boxes

Photoshop’s dia­logue boxes

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
col­or­munki
i1XTREME

Col­or­Munki sum­mary tuto­r­ial on Youtube
X-rite Eye One ( i1 ) 1 of 2 — Mon­i­tor Setup from colorHQ.com
X-rite Eye One ( i1 ) 2 of 2 — Mon­i­tor Adjust­ments from colorHQ.com
Pod­cast #62 — Mon­i­tor — printer cal­i­bra­tion (an intro­duc­tion) — Inter­view with Joe Brady
Pur­chase the col­or­Munki at B&H — Pur­chase the i1XTreme at B&H (what I reviewed) Pur­chase the i1 Photo at B&H (a good alter­na­tive if you don’t need the extra bells and whis­tles).
Joe Brady Photography

Link I for­got to men­tion — Just like there are bet­ter mon­i­tors for pho­tog­ra­phy, there are bet­ter print­ers with good print dri­vers that work well with the 2 sys­tems reviewed in this pod­cast. 2 rec­om­mended print­ers Epson R1900 and Epson R2880 at B&H

If you are still lurk­ing, feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to Steven K, benny, Lovin and SuzieQ who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography product reviews, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , ,

Comments

  1. Xrite spectrodensitometers says:
    October 28, 2009 at 6:47 pm

    Yet again! an excel­lent pod­cast / arti­cle. We use x-rite for all of our cal­i­bra­tion devices. Thanks for information!

    Reply
  2. admin says:
    April 6, 2009 at 8:41 am

    That is GREAT to know — Thanks so much, and I’m about to edit the shownotes.

    Reply
  3. justaleecher says:
    April 5, 2009 at 4:44 pm

    I thought jou might like to know:

    http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=1115&Action=support&SupportID=4658

    As of March 2009 the pre­vi­ous 3 seat license restric­tion has been removed from the Col­or­Munki Photo product.

    Now you can install and run your Col­or­Munki soft­ware on any num­ber of com­put­ers that you own! We’ve been lis­ten­ing to our cus­tomers, to the blogs and the many forums that state the Col­or­Munki 3 seat end-user license pol­icy is dif­fi­cult to adhere to. Many pho­tog­ra­phers have indi­cated that they have more than 3 sys­tems in their stu­dio, and they would like to freely move the device around.

    There­fore, X-Rite is imme­di­ately chang­ing the 3 seat license pol­icy within Col­or­Munki Photo and extend­ing the use to an unlim­ited num­ber of seats.

    Reply
  4. admin says:
    April 1, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Col­or­munki is about 450 USD
    i1 extreme is 1499.00 USD
    i1 pro is about 1299.00
    — The dif­fer­ences are described in the B& H links in this post.…but BOTH can cal­i­brate print­ers, the Spy­der cannot.

    Reply
  5. realestatecurve says:
    April 1, 2009 at 12:24 am

    what is the price for this? I have used a spi­der at my old work before, it did the trick, this seem a bit more advance even with a meter, pretty cool

    Reply
  6. justaleecher says:
    March 24, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    A bril­liant post! I’ve been look­ing for­ward for such an indepth infor­ma­tive post. Does the Col­or­Mon­key realy let you cal­i­brate (just) 3 mon­i­tors? That scarred me because I was ready to buy one. It’s not in any of the doc­u­men­ta­tion. (Col­or­Munki Photo includes an unlim­ited seat license for all users.) Thanks a lot for the infor­ma­tive, friendly pod­casts. It’s highly appreciated

    Reply
  7. Benny says:
    March 23, 2009 at 8:55 am

    Another excel­lent pod­cast Marko. Of course now I have to save some money for a cal­i­bra­tion devoce. Thanks a lot :)

    Reply

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