Arts & Entertainment

ColorMunki - no monkey business!

Written by Lissette Arias on April 11, 2008 11:44 am EST

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The ColorMunki^TM for designers is here!

It’s a nifty little widget, a hand-held gadget that reads color from anywhere. With this little gadget, you can capture any color from any object “on your screen, your desk, your co-workers breakfast, the family pet… anywhere you find inspiration.”

Then you incorporate these colors into your computer where you can build color palettes and directly import them into your favorite design tools; it’s compatible with Adobe® Photoshop®, Illustrator®, InDesign® and QuarkXPress®!

What’s the cost of the ColorMunki Design? $499 US. With this you get the White ColorMunki spectrophotometer, ColorMunki Palettes Creation and Profiling software, ColorMunki protection bag/monitor holder, Quick Start Guide and USB power cord.

I wish I could rate this first hand but the sneaky little munki is not available yet. You can order it but you won’t get charged until it is ready to be shipped early April which is now, isn’t? So why am I still getting that message in the order process? In any case, I am curious to see where this goes. I thought about it and can recall one similar-type concept, the one at your hardware store, where you take a little snippet of anything with color and they will match it and make you a fresh can of paint of that particular color.

I do wonder though, what are the limitations? I mean, is it waterproof or sticky-proof even? Must you hold it against the object or can you place it an inch away and still capture the color? How many colors can you capture in one sitting? How many colors does the memory hold? I also wonder if this is the way to capture color the way a machine reads it rather than what our human eyes perceive. Things that make you go hmm.

I’m positive you can find creative use for such a cute witty munki in your design department. Who wouldn’t? I can see me getting a little carried away tough, ColorMunki, a banana split and me… I can only longingly begin to imagine the yummy names I’d dream up for my color palettes!

Trackback URL for this post: http://www.gimmiethescoop.com/colormunki-no-monkey-business/trackback

6 Responses to “ColorMunki - no monkey business!”

Adam Weeks Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I’m pretty sure I have a device that does that already, its called a digital camera. Used in conjunction with the eye-dropper tool in photoshop, I can capture millions of colors! For less than $499 too!
Lissette Arias Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Good point Adam! Only thing I would be concerned about are all the variables cameras have when translating colors. You can take the same exact picture and get different results with every camera you use. Exposure, color balance and temperature, curves, even the camera make and model will give you differing results in colors.
juicebox Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I’d also like to note about the digital camera suggestion. Each Camera has it’s own colorspace, adapted by each manufacturer, so the same shade of green, may not be the same shade of green to a camera. The colorspace is what the processor uses to depict color captured by the sensor.In addition, most mid-end and high-end SLR camera’s have enhanced colorspace’s such as the Adobe Colorspace on the D300, which shows colors dramatically different from that of the original colorspace of sRGB. Lastly, camera’s may also show different colors on the final output of the file versus what you saw in your eye by quite a bit. What you think is bright, could be dull. This seems like a useful tool if you have the money for it and seems like it goes beyond a typical imaging device to achieve a uniform color detection. Absolutely a digital cameras could be the second option, just remember results are not uniform and you could be disappointed after a long day of taking color pictures and them not coming out as expected.
Adam Weeks Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
juicebox & Lissette, I totally agree with you two. But whats saying this ColorMunki won’t have the same issues a digital camera would? If you sample an object outside then sample it inside under florescent lighting, will it give you the same results? I think Lissette needs to be sent a demo unit to test out and give us some analysis!
juicebox Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
This is very true. The potential is there for it to have the same issues as a digital camera, but they may have improved the sensors to have true to eye color versus what we have traditionally seen in the digital camera marketplace. It would be interesting to have Lissette get a demo unit and test this puppy out.
Lissette Arias Says:
April 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Hey guys,
Here’s an update straight from the source, the maker X-rite Incorporated, http://www.xrite.com/home.aspx, and I quote:

“ColorMunki is a small, tethered spectrophotometer. This means it must interface to software via the computer’s USB port. Also, the spectro must be placed against, or touch, the sample you are taking color measurements on to effectively block out light interference. The ColorMunki will use its own internal light source to illuminate the sample being measured. And your blog was correct when you likened ColorMunki to the color measuring system for paint. It is the same basic idea. A spectrophotometer to measure the color of the sample, and software to interpret the data and make something of it — a paint formula, in the case of the paint system, or a computer monitor or inkjet printer profile in the case of ColorMunki…”

Thanks guys for your detailed explanation!