Your experience with the Color Munki

[Ellis Vener]

Andrew is correct in his gneral presentation of the differences between the Colormunki Display and the i1 Display Pro   It is important to note  that Andrew's business is color management so he works on a different and more intensive scale where the greater sophistication of the i1 Display Pro for the work is very important. While  he describes the Colormunki Display as "crippled" for his purposes, that judgement may not apply to others who simply want to get good reliable results without having to making a deeper dive into the weeds of color management.

The Colormunki Display is absolutely fine for general work. One difference that may be of interest to a general audience is that The i1 Display Pro and the version of i1 Profiler software that it uses are definitely faster than the the ColorMunki Display and ColorMunki software.

[PhilipCummins]

For the sake of ~$79 US I'd just get the faster and more fully featured i1 Display Pro over the ColorMunki Display. Theoretically I could use Argyll to bolster the basic software with the ColorMunki Display however I don't think the average person would be interested in that. Usually I find it's nicer to find a situation where a feature is later shown to be useful (ie, luminance levels/white point) once you understand what it is for vs finding the software can't do it when you really need to use it. (This goes back to the days when it was OK when the hardware couldn't do something - having software limitations because a company doesn't want you to do it is infinitely more annoying IMHO).

[chrismurphy]

Arguably the issue here is we should have had colorimeters with software upgradeable (behind the scenes) calibration matrices, so we can get the best results possible regardless of display technology used. The i1 Display Pro doesn't have fixed calibration matrices, the ColorMunki Display (and other variants) do.

It remains to be seen how well this will work longer term for end users, but in theory the same piece of hardware will function with a wider assortment of display technologies for a longer period of time. When the calibration matrix is mismatched to the spectral power distribution of the display technology, the results can be quite poor.

[Grant Kernan]

I find that the Color Munki device works with Color Eyes Display Pro. Many more setting choices. Lots to learn.
The older x-rite colorimeter is supported as well as 9 other devices. My display is very close to my printer output.

On the other hand it is note worthy that Breathing Color uses Color Munki to make profiles.

[The View]

As I started the thread I'd like to post what I did:

I bought the i1 Display Pro for its great screen calibration ability. Just calibrated my new NEW PA271W and achieved a delta e of 0.23.

For printing, I'll be using canned profiles for now.

I don't think printing paper has the same high variety as the old darkroom baryt papers, so I think I'm fine with the canned profiles for now (which should have been done with calibration equipment much more expensive than most of us want to spend, and definitely way above the Munki).

Should I discover I'd need custom profiles for my papers I will think about buying a Munki for that (seems to be its strength, while its monitor profiling ability is only so-so, according to tests) or an i1 Photo 2. But I think there are quite a few things to improve (like getting a close to ideal monitor calibration for printing) until I'd need to do that.

[Jan Morales]

I have both the i1Display Pro and ColorMunki and that's what I'm doing as well. I can't justify the $1,500 for the i1Photo Pro 2, but I also don't always like canned profiles either, so I'm using the ColorMunki for print profiles. (For example, I found the canned profile for Canson BFK Rives to be way too warm.)

I was concerned about having the i1Profiler and ColorMunki Photo software on the same computer, so I'm making the print profiles with ColorMunki Photo on a separate computer. It's a little bit of a nuisance, but I rarely need to create print profiles.