Which is better: ColorMunki Design or Eye-One Pro? It all depends on your needs.The objective of this analysis is to inform about the differences between X-Rite / Pantone’s professional prepress colour management system, the Eye-One Pro with software, and the new ColorMunki Design. In order to compare systems that resemble each other as closely as possible, the Eye-One Pro Design package deal was taken as the comparison basis. Another option would have been to take ProfileMaker Pro Publish as the software basis. This would have made the price difference considerably more explicit (by 1,700.00 EUR), but the feature set would differ too much (Profile Editor, measurement of scanners, multi-colour devices, etc).
This analysis will first discuss the differences between the compared systems (“business processes”), then briefly discuss the cost and cost-effectiveness of both systems and then finally present you with a basic risk analysis.
The Process with Eye-One Pro DesignThe Eye-One Pro Design package contains a hardware component and a software component. The hardware component is the Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer with a ruler system, some accessories to position the device on spot colours, and a free Eye-One Display 2 that comes included when buying from specific online stores.
The hardware component is of good quality, the output is at prepress level (inter-instrument deviations are less than 0.4 deltaE), and the construction of the devices is so that a maximum of versatility and accuracy are obtained for the design and prepress market.
The software component is Eye-One Match 3.x software, a program that allows users to easily and simply create a monitor calibration and profile, scanner and projector profiles and RGB or CMYK printer profiles. The software component is easy to use, but still difficult enough to require a manual to be read before using the system at its fullest.
The combination of the components enables an average designer to create profiles for his/her colour-capable equipment with the exception of digital cameras (extra module). The software component does not support the creation of colour patches, nor does it do anything to make the task of colour management easy.
The Eye-One Pro Design package is clearly aimed at creating a colour management workflow. Some creative support can be had in the form of the free i1 Share program, a utility that comes with the software and allows users to measure spot colours, set different lighting environments and see the differences between each environment in terms of the colours measured.
I have measured the learning process, the profiling process, and the i1 Share creativity support. Most of these measurements were timing the different processes, while others involved a qualitative assessment of the process. It will be obvious that the time it takes to learn the whole system will depend on a number of factors, while the qualitative assessment is wholly subjective. I therefore am not including the timing and quality assessment results. What I did instead is give the Eye-One Pro Design package a mark on a scale from 1 to 10. This mark is based on my considerable experience with colour management systems.
The Eye-One Pro Design package got a mark of 7.5 for colour management workflow support. For creative support, the solution earns a 5.5.
The Process with ColorMunki DesignColorMunki Design also contains a hardware and a software component. Again, the hardware component contains a spectrophotometer, but this time without any accessories. All accessories are built-in. The hardware component was extensively covered in the review of ColorMunki Design, and is of good quality. The whole system is less versatile than the Eye-One Pro, and the accuracy is less, but results are very close to what can be obtained with an Eye-One Pro.
The ColorMunki Design system is aimed at designers who work with spot colours—more specifically, the Pantone spot colour system—on a regular basis. The software component serves two goals: one goal is to enable a designer to easily create a colour management workflow starting with the monitor and ending with a printer. The second goal is to support the designer’s creativity.
The first goal was extensively discussed in the ColorMunki review. I concluded that creating a colour management workflow can hardly be made any more simple than with ColorMunki Design. From monitor calibration to printer profiling, the user is guided all the way, and assistance is available with every step in the form of short videos that explain how to proceed.
The second goal is left to the instinct of the designer. Although all functionality of the program that supports the creative process, is explained with the same short video method, it is up to the user to discover and explore the ColorMunki Design interface for colour patch creation, etc.
The overall objective of the system is to make sure designers can concentrate on their creative work, not on the technology. To that effect, there are a number of features built-in that allow designers to enjoy the shortest path to colour consistency. Examples are PrintSafe, which turns off colour patches that can’t be printed using the selected printer profile and Swatch synchronisation that synchronises colour swatches in different design applications with the palettes the user creates.
ColorMunki Design therefore serves two different but related processes, of which only one can be compared with the Eye-One Pro Design solution: colour management workflow setup.
Again, I measured the output of ColorMunki Design processes and found it to be better in some areas than the Eye-One Pro Design package. For example, creating a printer profile involves less fiddling because the colour patches are huge and there’s no ruler needed to guide the instrument. The concept itself resulted in far less misreadings of the instrument.
For colour profiling and calibration, I would give ColorMunki Design a 7. For creativity support, the solution merits a 7.5.
Cost and Cost-Effectiveness of ColorMunki Design and Eye-One Pro DesignEye-One Pro Design with UV filter costs approx. 700.00 EUR, while the ProfileMaker Publish package deal would cost 2,150.00 EUR. ColorMunki Design costs approx. 450.00 EUR.
Based on cost alone, the ColorMunki Design is a clear winner. However, in the assessment of cost-effectiveness, we should also look at the output results of the systems, their efficiency and the lifecycle of the software. Starting with the latter, the lifecycle of Eye-One Match and ProfileMaker runs over more than 12 months. This means users will get free updates for a longer period than ColorMunki Design which will probably (we couldn’t get a clear answer to the lifecycle question from Pantone) be as short as “ordinary” software.
The upgrade path for ColorMunki Design is also unknown at present—the software uses the measuring instrument as a virtual dongle. It is unknown whether the software will be upgradeable by itself, or whether users are supposed to buy a whole new system when new software is released. This could certainly be the case if the hardware is upgraded as well—however small the improvements might be.
The upgrade path for Ee-One Match 3 and certainly for ProfileMaker is known. It follows the same rules as any other software.
The output of both software components is equally good, but ColorMunki Design supports creative processes better and is easier and faster to handle and maintain. The cost-effectiveness of ColorMunki Design is therefore superior to that of Eye-One Pro Design. The latter can only handle calibration and profiling and creative support is lacklustre, if not non-existent.
The efficiency of ColorMunki Design is therefore also better than that of the Eye-One Pro Design package. ColorMunki Design finally also supports an open standard exchange file format (CxF 2.0) that is more robust than the version supported by the free i1 Share program.
Although I find it impossible to offer an accurate financial value statement, in view of the above, ColorMunki Design’s actual value for a designer lies somewhere in-between Eye-One Pro Design and Eye-One Pro with ProfileMaker Publish. In other words, ColorMunki Design definitely offers more value for the money to its target market than the Eye-One Design offering.
Basic Risk AnalysisWhat if a designer wouldn’t buy a ColorMunki Design solution, or an Eye-One Pro Design system?
If a designer wouldn’t buy either system—no colour management workflow system at all—he or she could never tell whether colours in a file, displayed on their monitor, would match those in the final output. A designer would not even be sure which spot colour would truly match the one seen on-screen. In one word: colour trustworthiness would be missing from that designer’s working environment.
If a designer would buy Eye-One Pro Designer, instead of ColorMunki Designer, the colour management workflow problem would be solved at the cost of a considerable investment in time (to learn) and money. Furthermore, the risk that is solved by the ColorMunki Design PrintSafe and AppSet functionality would still exist. This would mean an extra effort (paying more attention to details) on the part of the designer.
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ColorMunki Design vs. Eye-One Pro Design
Which is better: ColorMunki Design or Eye-One Pro? It all depends on your needs.The objective of this analysis is to inform about the differences between X-Rite / Pantone’s professional prepress colour management system, the Eye-One Pro with software, and the new ColorMunki Design. In order to compare systems that resemble each other as closely as possible, the Eye-One Pro Design package deal was taken as the comparison basis. Another option would have been to take ProfileMaker Pro Publish as the software basis. This would have made the price difference considerably more explicit (by 1,700.00 EUR), but the feature set would differ too much (Profile Editor, measurement of scanners, multi-colour devices, etc).
This analysis will first discuss the differences between the compared systems (“business processes”), then briefly discuss the cost and cost-effectiveness of both systems and then finally present you with a basic risk analysis.
The Process with Eye-One Pro DesignThe Eye-One Pro Design package contains a hardware component and a software component. The hardware component is the Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer with a ruler system, some accessories to position the device on spot colours, and a free Eye-One Display 2 that comes included when buying from specific online stores.
The hardware component is of good quality, the output is at prepress level (inter-instrument deviations are less than 0.4 deltaE), and the construction of the devices is so that a maximum of versatility and accuracy are obtained for the design and prepress market.
The software component is Eye-One Match 3.x software, a program that allows users to easily and simply create a monitor calibration and profile, scanner and projector profiles and RGB or CMYK printer profiles. The software component is easy to use, but still difficult enough to require a manual to be read before using the system at its fullest.
The combination of the components enables an average designer to create profiles for his/her colour-capable equipment with the exception of digital cameras (extra module). The software component does not support the creation of colour patches, nor does it do anything to make the task of colour management easy.
The Eye-One Pro Design package is clearly aimed at creating a colour management workflow. Some creative support can be had in the form of the free i1 Share program, a utility that comes with the software and allows users to measure spot colours, set different lighting environments and see the differences between each environment in terms of the colours measured.
I have measured the learning process, the profiling process, and the i1 Share creativity support. Most of these measurements were timing the different processes, while others involved a qualitative assessment of the process. It will be obvious that the time it takes to learn the whole system will depend on a number of factors, while the qualitative assessment is wholly subjective. I therefore am not including the timing and quality assessment results. What I did instead is give the Eye-One Pro Design package a mark on a scale from 1 to 10. This mark is based on my considerable experience with colour management systems.
The Eye-One Pro Design package got a mark of 7.5 for colour management workflow support. For creative support, the solution earns a 5.5.
The Process with ColorMunki DesignColorMunki Design also contains a hardware and a software component. Again, the hardware component contains a spectrophotometer, but this time without any accessories. All accessories are built-in. The hardware component was extensively covered in the review of ColorMunki Design, and is of good quality. The whole system is less versatile than the Eye-One Pro, and the accuracy is less, but results are very close to what can be obtained with an Eye-One Pro.
The ColorMunki Design system is aimed at designers who work with spot colours—more specifically, the Pantone spot colour system—on a regular basis. The software component serves two goals: one goal is to enable a designer to easily create a colour management workflow starting with the monitor and ending with a printer. The second goal is to support the designer’s creativity.
The first goal was extensively discussed in the ColorMunki review. I concluded that creating a colour management workflow can hardly be made any more simple than with ColorMunki Design. From monitor calibration to printer profiling, the user is guided all the way, and assistance is available with every step in the form of short videos that explain how to proceed.
The second goal is left to the instinct of the designer. Although all functionality of the program that supports the creative process, is explained with the same short video method, it is up to the user to discover and explore the ColorMunki Design interface for colour patch creation, etc.
The overall objective of the system is to make sure designers can concentrate on their creative work, not on the technology. To that effect, there are a number of features built-in that allow designers to enjoy the shortest path to colour consistency. Examples are PrintSafe, which turns off colour patches that can’t be printed using the selected printer profile and Swatch synchronisation that synchronises colour swatches in different design applications with the palettes the user creates.
ColorMunki Design therefore serves two different but related processes, of which only one can be compared with the Eye-One Pro Design solution: colour management workflow setup.
Again, I measured the output of ColorMunki Design processes and found it to be better in some areas than the Eye-One Pro Design package. For example, creating a printer profile involves less fiddling because the colour patches are huge and there’s no ruler needed to guide the instrument. The concept itself resulted in far less misreadings of the instrument.
For colour profiling and calibration, I would give ColorMunki Design a 7. For creativity support, the solution merits a 7.5.
Cost and Cost-Effectiveness of ColorMunki Design and Eye-One Pro DesignEye-One Pro Design with UV filter costs approx. 700.00 EUR, while the ProfileMaker Publish package deal would cost 2,150.00 EUR. ColorMunki Design costs approx. 450.00 EUR.
Based on cost alone, the ColorMunki Design is a clear winner. However, in the assessment of cost-effectiveness, we should also look at the output results of the systems, their efficiency and the lifecycle of the software. Starting with the latter, the lifecycle of Eye-One Match and ProfileMaker runs over more than 12 months. This means users will get free updates for a longer period than ColorMunki Design which will probably (we couldn’t get a clear answer to the lifecycle question from Pantone) be as short as “ordinary” software.
The upgrade path for ColorMunki Design is also unknown at present—the software uses the measuring instrument as a virtual dongle. It is unknown whether the software will be upgradeable by itself, or whether users are supposed to buy a whole new system when new software is released. This could certainly be the case if the hardware is upgraded as well—however small the improvements might be.
The upgrade path for Ee-One Match 3 and certainly for ProfileMaker is known. It follows the same rules as any other software.
The output of both software components is equally good, but ColorMunki Design supports creative processes better and is easier and faster to handle and maintain. The cost-effectiveness of ColorMunki Design is therefore superior to that of Eye-One Pro Design. The latter can only handle calibration and profiling and creative support is lacklustre, if not non-existent.
The efficiency of ColorMunki Design is therefore also better than that of the Eye-One Pro Design package. ColorMunki Design finally also supports an open standard exchange file format (CxF 2.0) that is more robust than the version supported by the free i1 Share program.
Although I find it impossible to offer an accurate financial value statement, in view of the above, ColorMunki Design’s actual value for a designer lies somewhere in-between Eye-One Pro Design and Eye-One Pro with ProfileMaker Publish. In other words, ColorMunki Design definitely offers more value for the money to its target market than the Eye-One Design offering.
Basic Risk AnalysisWhat if a designer wouldn’t buy a ColorMunki Design solution, or an Eye-One Pro Design system?
If a designer wouldn’t buy either system—no colour management workflow system at all—he or she could never tell whether colours in a file, displayed on their monitor, would match those in the final output. A designer would not even be sure which spot colour would truly match the one seen on-screen. In one word: colour trustworthiness would be missing from that designer’s working environment.
If a designer would buy Eye-One Pro Designer, instead of ColorMunki Designer, the colour management workflow problem would be solved at the cost of a considerable investment in time (to learn) and money. Furthermore, the risk that is solved by the ColorMunki Design PrintSafe and AppSet functionality would still exist. This would mean an extra effort (paying more attention to details) on the part of the designer.