ColorMunki Design can't profile iMac OSX 10.7 monitor?

I will call the seller and see if they will take the ColorMunki Design back or maybe put it toward the purchase of the i1 Photo Pro.

Just to make sure you ask for the correct item, it's the i1 Photo Pro 2 . It's important to ask for the version 2 series since there may be older models still around.

If you decide later that you do want, or need CMYK capabilities, you don't have to start all over with a new unit. All you need to do is upgrade your license. Most likely, the cost would just be the $100 difference. You then get a new serial number or upgrade code to plug into the i1 Profiler software and it unlocks the extra stuff.

1500 seems to be the price point all over!

Yeah, that's pretty much the norm for X-Rite's merchandise. They dictate the price to vendors, who are given little leeway to undercut one another.

But what I don't understand is why the first print of the color patches is clean and clear and bright, and the second set looks so very different...what is this?

Do you mean when you try creating a printer profile with the ColorMunki? The second sheet is printed differently?

Yup- the second sheet prints differently...is this what is supposed to happen?

No. Something's goofy.

The number one, "you can't do it any other way" rule for any profile (doesn't matter whether you're talking about a monitor, printer, camera, scanner or whatever) is capturing the device in its raw state. That means with zero color management of any kind being applied in any way while you are creating the profile for that device.

So for a printer, the target sheets must be printed with all color management turned off.

Oh! Duh! Forgot about that. I only tried a printer profile using a ColorMunki once for the test I mentioned earlier, and that was a couple of years ago.

Anyway, nothing's wrong. The first sheet is mostly primary and saturated colors, the second is grays, browns and other muted tones. All printer profiling targets contain a range like this.

The ColorMunki is good enough to start with in that it simplifies the process of color management as much as it can be. Example being the number of patches it uses for printers - which is practically nothing. Likely one reason why it doesn't do a very good job. There's only 100 total on those two target sheets, and a decent profiling patch set should be at least 500. I use 3000 because the i1 iSis makes it so easy.

Get a handle on the process and then move up in maybe 6 months to a year. Whatever you're comfortable with.

The less expensive route will save you about $1800, and you'd still be able to profile your monitor, digital projector and RGB printers. After doing enough of them with a DTP-22 many years ago, it got really tedious reading in printer patches one at a time. Took hours to do one profile. Got an autoreader (like the i1 iSis) as soon as I could afford one.

Another optional piece with the i1 Pro 2 is the i1iO, which mounts the i1 Pro 2 onto an automated arm so you don't have to hand read the patches. But that alone costs about $2500. May as well just get an i1 iSis.

As a suggestion, the default monitor settings for photo work are a 5500K white point, and a 2.2 gamma. I can't guess what nitwit, or group of them decided a 6500K white point should be the default. Almost no one in the world views a very bluish gray balance that way in natural lighting. The most commonly measured white point is 5300K. You will have FAR better luck matching your prints to the monitor when you aren't using such an outlandishly and unnatural white point as 6500K

How the monitor appears doesn't in any way affect how the printer profile comes out, but make sure to calibrate the monitor with the ColorMunki. Only then does ColorSync have a profile that is based on an actual readout of what the monitor looks like instead of completely guessing, as it does using the Calibrate feature in the System Preferences.

Another option for choosing your preferred white point is to use the ColorMunki to do a reading of the type of white surface you normally use. It would be one of the advanced features. You do need a controlled lighting condition to get an accurate reading, but what you do when setting the white point you want to use for your monitor profile is to measure your art board, or canvas white before anything has been painted on it. Then your monitor's white point matches your work surface.

5500K is just the suggested white point for photographers because it's the closest to most natural lighting. I use 5000K because that's the default for the printing industry, which matches very closely to the somewhat dirty white of a typical publication stock (i.e. magazine paper). But it can be anything you want. All white point readings are considered "daylight white". Where you live in the world determines what that light looks like day to day. 6500K just isn't common, so who knows why that ever became the default.

and then one of the paint itself, dried, for photographic accuracy?

You can't have two separate white points in one profile. Use the substrate as the target. All other colors should then line up to their closest hues.

Be aware that even RGB can't show a very large portion of the visible spectrum. Monitors have come a long way from the dull CRT days, but compared to L*A*B*, even wide gamut monitors fall well short. So don't expect the brightness of some paints to reproduce well on the monitor, much less a print.

Re: RGB, apparently CM has an " out of gamut" feature for this issue?

No, your image software does. The created monitor profile will be an exact mathematical description of the full gamut and color range possible on that monitor. When you're in (example), Photoshop, and you make adjustments that put any colors that change outside of the monitor's physical capability, you can have PS set to show you when colors are clipping. Doesn't mean anything is "wrong", it's that the hue or saturation of the clipped areas are beyond the monitor's ability to reproduce it.