Need help with the ColorMunki

I got a ColorMunki Photo yesterday. Awesome little device, but I need help. I went through the calibration process for matching my printer to my LCD. I closed the blinds in my office and just have the light in the ceiling that I normally have on when I'm editing photos. I go through the advanced setup, and the device checks the light in my office. It then asks me to hang the device over the monitor. It then asks me to adjust the brightness so that it is right in the middle at 80. Goes through its thing and I save out the profile. Then next, I insert two sheets of Ilford Pearl paper into the printer. I configure the printer to not do any color management. I print out the test pages with the Pro Glossy Paper selected. I scan the test pages with the colormunki. It does it's thing with the second page, and it saves the profile for my Canon printer.

I go into Lightroom, choose the new profile, and print. Pictures come out a good stop or 2 too dark. I know from looking at X-Rite's support pages, that this is an extremely common problem, but I have no clue what to do. X-Rite is pretty much implying that my monitor is too bright. But a) isn't that the point of it scanning ambient light? and b) wouldn't the Canon GL2 profile be completely blown out if that were the case?

It's to a point where I'd rather just use the Canon GL2 profile that came with my printer since it's so much closer than the Colormunki profile.

What OS?
What luminance is your screen at? (Cd/m^2)

TaDa,

The ambient light check is just for your benefit. It does nothing beyond advise you. My own room is about right for lux, but the colour temperature is dreadful at 1900 deg K.

If you need to adjust the monitor brightness, as it seems you do, then its a completely seperate and important part of the calibration routine.

Would I be correct in saying that the ColorMunki still does not help you set the luminance?

TaDa wrote in post #9931257
...I go into Lightroom, choose the new profile, and print. Pictures come out a good stop or 2 too dark. I know from looking at X-Rite's support pages, that this is an extremely common problem, but I have no clue what to do. X-Rite is pretty much implying that my monitor is too bright. But a) isn't that the point of it scanning ambient light? and b) wouldn't the Canon GL2 profile be completely blown out if that were the case?...

Some related reading:
http://photo.net/digit​al-darkroom-forum/00Vasw

You might also want to make sure you're creating a ver.2 monitor profile, rather than ver.4, just for the heck of it.

Windows XP

The light check tells me that my room light is 121, and that it's going to set my monitor to 80 cd/m^2. When I turn off all the lights, it measures my office at 11 lux, and STILL says it's going to set my monitor to 80.

80 seems low if you still are printing dark. My own choice of 100 cd/m2 is lower than the 110/120 usually suggested. Does it actually adjust this itself, or just make a suggestion?

I'm unclear how an ambient lighting check has any bearing on the brightness of the monitor.

Well, when you're going through the advanced calibration, it tells you to adjust the brightness of the monitor to 80 and it gives you a check mark when 80 is hit. It projects a white page on the monitor while the device is on it. While adjusting the brightness, and the blue box comes up for me to be able to select the brightness adjustment, the level drops low, so it is actually reading the screen while you're adjusting it.

I have the same problem with ColorMunki. I’ve tried everything that I can think of. But, when I first got ColorMunki 18 months ago I was using a Dell dimension 3000 and it worked perfect. What you see is what you got. The Dell was old and slow so I got a faster rebuilt HP. Both OS are XP. The colors look good, but now my prints come out very dark also.

I set the ColorMunki profile as default, selected printer choose profile then tried PS choose profile, still dark. I even tried replacing the PC video card. I wasted a lot of paper and ink trying to figure out the problem. The only thing I could do in PSe7 is to make a correction brightness layer set at +45. That would make my prints come out at the proper brightness.

Now this is where it gets strange. I downloaded a not card program from Red River Paper that is a PS plug in. When I make note cards the cards come out prefect, but only when using the plug in. No correction layer needed. It could not be the plug in, because I was having problems before I down loaded the note card plug in.

I’ve still searching the web for an answer, but I haven’t found one yet. Although ColorMunki is easy to use, even a monkey can use it, but for $400 ColorMunki is a big disappointment.

TaDa... How do the prints look when printed from another color managed application, like Photoshop?

TaDa,

That makes sense now, thanks. The Eye1Display2 I use operates in a similar fashion by offering a "Target" which can be achieved by adjusting the monitor brightness.

Lowner wrote in post #9937067
TaDa,

That makes sense now, thanks. The Eye1Display2 I use operates in a similar fashion by offering a "Target" which can be achieved by adjusting the monitor brightness.

And the Colormunki will determine whether the monitor/video card system is DDC compliant. If it is, the software will make the adjustments itself. If it's not, the software will notify you that you must make brightness adjustments via the monitor's OSD.

ChasP505 wrote in post #9935982
TaDa... How do the prints look when printed from another color managed application, like Photoshop?

Well, because of all the test printing, I'm now out of ink, so I have to buy more tomorrow. If I use Lightroom and use the Canon GL2 profile, then the prints come out fine. The colors aren't exact, but the brightness of the prints is in line with Lightroom. When I use the new profile that the Colormunki created, then it's way off on brightness, but the colors are better. Overall, this is just frustrating as hell.