As the first major new offering from Pantone following its acquisition by X-Rite, ColorMunki Design has caused something of a stir in creative circles since its launch in March. Billed as the ‘do everything, go everywhere’ colour solution, the product is heralded as bringing together the technical expertise of X-Rite and the design knowhow of Pantone to deliver the ultimate combination of creative freedom and control over results for any designer. So does it live up to the hype? One look at ColorMunki Design is enough to show it delivers on the ‘go anywhere’ side of things. The lightweight unit measures just 4 x 4in so is total portability - even the carry case has a dual use, securing the device to your screen for the monitor calibration function. But it’s the ‘do everything’ bit that should really get the design community buzzing. Spot colour measurement, palette creation and management, onscreen and in-print colour accuracy… it’s a list of functions that solutions costing twice the price can struggle to live up to. Yet access the ColorMunki software, and the simplicity of its operation, belies this versatility.

Capture any colour
ColorMunki Design allows you to incorporate any colour from any source into your designs, providing a real freedom of choice when building a colour palette. The key to this is the technology behind ColorMunki. Unlike many other colour measuring instruments in its price range, ColorMunki is spectrophotometer based and therefore reproduces colours accurately. ColorMunki can read colour from any surface and because of its portability you can have it on hand for whenever and wherever inspiration hits and capture shades you feel will be useful in your designs.

Easy colour extraction and colour library access
If the colour you need already exists in another image, you can simply extract it with ColorMunki. Whether it’s from your own files, the ColorMunki stock library or even a search engine generated image, you just need to drag the image onto the application to build the colour(s) of your choice into your palette. If you prefer a more traditional method of colour selection, you can of course choose from the thousands available in the Pantone Goe, Pantone Matching system or Munsell colour libraries, all of which are built in to the ColorMunki software.

Select a colour patch in the ColorMunki software and with one click you can access similar and harmonious colours and add them to your palette. Find colour references instantly by selecting ‘Find in Pantone’ or ‘Find in Munsell’. If you are having trouble visualising how a colour will look in a finished design, ColorMunki offers the option to search for the shade in library images or palettes. To view up to date images and palettes, connect to www.colormunki.com – a growing forum for idea sharing within the design community.

PrintSafe
Once you have found the perfect colour scheme, you need to know you can reproduce it in print. ColorMunki’s PrintSafe function shows you at a glance whether your chosen shades are achievable on the page; non-achievable colours are greyed out on screen.

Easy integration with design applications
While the ColorMunki Design is built around creativity, practicality has not been forgotten. The colour palettes you create in ColorMunki software can be automatically synchronised with most major design applications, including the Adobe Creative Suite and Quark. The built-in AppSet automatically sets your design applications to operate in a colour controlled environment (see below) to maintain consistency throughout your workflow.

Accurate colour on screen and on the page
As an all-in-one device, ColorMunki does more than expand your potential colour palette – it makes sure you can see and print colours accurately too. No matter how ideal your chosen colour scheme may seem, if you are devising it on an inaccurate monitor, you cannot guarantee that the finished results on the printer page will be as perfect. Even the best monitor will experience some colour drift over time, and unless you know how to put it right, it soon shows in your output. ColorMunki offers quick and accurate monitor calibration, with a choice of easy or advanced modes. In a few simple steps and a matter of minutes you can be sure the colours you can see on screen are correct.

As a spectrophotometer-based solution, ColorMunki also provides accurate printer profiling for RGB and CMYK devices for total colour control from conception to output. While some printer profiling solutions need you to undertake timeconsuming patch-by-patch measurement of large test charts, ColorMunki has superfast scanning technology that measures 50-patch test charts in less than a minute. For added ease of use, ColorMunki allows you to profile both your monitor and printer at once with the simple Monitor-to-Print Match function.

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