X-Rite ColorChecker Passport

DucDuc

DucDuc

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Thomas
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Ok so I'm planning on placing an order soon for soon accessories and looking at tools to i,prove IQ. Over the years I've been investing in glass and not focused as much on peripheral tools of the trade. I now see this as a great opportunity to get a good gains to investment ratio. I know using the rendering on screen is not really an acceptable way to judge white balance and true color and I know my monitor struggles. The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport may be a good option. Who used it? What you know about it, competitive product suggestions? For a lot less money I could just get the Kodak 18% grays is this a better or equal route to color correction?

Thanks in advance
 
I sat through one of their webinars which showed what it can do. I thought it was really impressive. I particularly like the software which integrates in to lightroom and automates the White balance process.
 
The first thing you need is to get some hardware to calibrate your monitor. Without that the ColorChecker is pretty useless.
 
Firstly, as already mentioned, you need a calibrated monitor.

Once that is sorted, the Colorchecker Passport is great!

For shots in 'normal' light it doesn't add much - you should be able to correct any minor WB problems easily enough 'by eye'.

Once you try shooting in more 'challenging' light it is worth every penny.
EG:
Indoors with a mix of Tungsten, Halogen, Florescent, CF, etc.
Anywhere where the light is 'coloured' (I needed to take some shots inside a red / yellow circus tent recently without flash. The profile created using the passport sorted the colours automatically for me)
 
While I agree that you should have a calibrated monitor first and foremost I actually don't get why that is relevant to the colour checker passport. Since the process is automated the colour check passport does not require your monitor to be calibrated. I is not viewing the image through your screen.

Sure - a properly corrected image may look wrong on your screen but it won't stop the colour checker passport from doing its job. Am i missing something?

Dub
 
dubcat said:
While I agree that you should have a calibrated monitor first and foremost I actually don't get why that is relevant to the colour checker passport. Since the process is automated the colour check passport does not require your monitor to be calibrated. I is not viewing the image through your screen.

Sure - a properly corrected image may look wrong on your screen but it won't stop the colour checker passport from doing its job. Am i missing something?

Dub
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Trouble is I use a colour checker sometimes and its great, but generating a custom camera calibration and setting white balance using it will give you 'accurate' colors and WB, but sometimes that is not what you want. I prefer my people shots a little warmer than neutral and without a calibrated monitor you can't really judge what you are getting.

If you were always happy with neutral then fine, but you'll often find it looks nicer otherwise. The colour checker will give you great consistency though and as mentioned is really good for mixed lighting ect. You really need both a calibrated monitor and colour checker but if I was to choose only one it would be monitor calibration.
 
dubcat said:
While I agree that you should have a calibrated monitor first and foremost I actually don't get why that is relevant to the colour checker passport. Since the process is automated the colour check passport does not require your monitor to be calibrated. I is not viewing the image through your screen.

Sure - a properly corrected image may look wrong on your screen but it won't stop the colour checker passport from doing its job. Am i missing something?

Dub
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If your monitor isn't calibrated this won't affect the working of the passport for generating profiles, or as a white / grey card - but that only helps if you always use it.

As I mentioned, I tend to use the cameras AWB for normal lighting (or for situations where I can't get a shot of the passport where the subject will be). In those cases you need a calibrated monitor, so it makes sense to get both.
 
lensflair said:
Trouble is I use a colour checker sometimes and its great, but generating a custom camera calibration and setting white balance using it will give you 'accurate' colors and WB, but sometimes that is not what you want.
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Exactly. I guess that's why Canon give several profile choices - Landscape, Faithful, Neutral, etc. All the ColorChecker does is give a more accurate 'Faithful' profile. Fine for most shots, but not for others.
 
quick message for the OP - i hope you didn't think i was saying that you don't need a calibrator. I was just saying you don't need one to make the passport work. I went and bought a calibrator today - and will buy the passport at some point in the future. Strongly suggest calibrator first if you don't have one :)
 
Thanks all the input guys I know a calibrated monitor is another essential tool and one that is planned for the future. A LaCie 526 25.5 to be sure. As my current monitor, 50 inch TV, struggles on the blacks and whites for definition I was going for true to life colors in the first instance. As the Xrite integrates with Lr3 using it consistently is not much of a chore really is it?, one more frame and piece of kit to carry. truly not the end of the world. Take your point about a better quality monitor for precise color customs. Thanks for the comments and sharing your experience
 
lensflair said:
Trouble is I use a colour checker sometimes and its great, but generating a custom camera calibration and setting white balance using it will give you 'accurate' colors and WB, but sometimes that is not what you want. I prefer my people shots a little warmer than neutral and without a calibrated monitor you can't really judge what you are getting.
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The passport has 3 Targets
1) Simple Grey Card (for standard WB setting)
2) Reference Colours (for crating custom profile)
3) Creative Enhancement (A set of warming / cooling WB patches )

The last of the 3 would enable you to get a precise and repeatable warmer or cooler shift from neutral - ideal to form the basis of any little further tweaks you might want.
 
Faldrax said:
The passport has 3 Targets
1) Simple Grey Card (for standard WB setting)
2) Reference Colours (for crating custom profile)
3) Creative Enhancement (A set of warming / cooling WB patches )

The last of the 3 would enable you to get a precise and repeatable warmer or cooler shift from neutral - ideal to form the basis of any little further tweaks you might want.
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Yeah I know but without seeing an accurate representation of the image how do you know if you want it warmer or cooler or by how much. Also I often don't use the checker, weddings are too fast paced to use it much of the time for instance and I like to adjust to taste. Without seeing the true result I just feel you are working blind and as much as I like the colour checker you can get good results without one if the monitor is calibrated.
 
Thinking of getting one of these myself.

Anyone suggest the cheapest place to pick one up? I've put a wanted up in the classifieds, but no one is biting yet! :(

I take it the retail version comes with all the different colour cards in the handy little holder?

I'm wondering if just a simple single colour chart might suffice? and download the software for free from x-rite? (or just use DNG utility from Adobe?) :thinking:
 
Zarch said:
I'm wondering if just a simple single colour chart might suffice?
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Yes, as long as it's got the correct colours on it. And I mean correct - not close, not nearly, but exactly the right colours.
 
hollis_f said:
Yes, as long as it's got the correct colours on it. And I mean correct - not close, not nearly, but exactly the right colours.
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I was thinking a x-rite, Macbeth or gretag colour card. All the same?

The just seem expensive for what they are?
 
Zarch said:
I take it the retail version comes with all the different colour cards in the handy little holder?
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Yes

Zarch said:
I'm wondering if just a simple single colour chart might suffice? and download the software for free from x-rite? (or just use DNG utility from Adobe?) :thinking:
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The plastic holder for the colours charts (which also works as a stand) has a serial number on it - which the software requires to work, as I recall.
 
I have an Xrite Colour Checker Passport, I also have Spyder Cube (which I think is better especially for multi-light sources google the videos).

I have a a Spyder 3 Pro, Spyder 3 Print and also IT8 Colour patches for profiling my scanner.

It is only when you really get into it that you realise how much Colour Management can effect your results.

Total cost of all this colour management runs into £100s so most people don't bother, as I have 2 monitors, 3 printers (1 colour laser, 1 inkjet and 1 dye sub), 2 windows laptops, 1 macbook pro and 3 (film & print) flatbed scanners it is important to make sure that all are as equally colour balanced as possible.
 
Thanks for the info chaps......

My first choice would be to get the Colorchecker Passport as it has WB stuff on too.... . but the 70 quid price tag is putting me off.

Failing picking one up 2nd hand, I think I might look at a single colour chart and see how I get on...... but what do they go for 2nd hand? Hardly see any available. :(
 
Zarch said:
I was thinking a x-rite, Macbeth or gretag colour card. All the same?

The just seem expensive for what they are?
Click to expand...

I think you are paying for the software that plugs in to lightroom and not just for a correction chart. When I look at nik efex and other plugins costs it doesn't seem so much.
 
Zarch said:
Thanks for the info chaps......

My first choice would be to get the Colorchecker Passport as it has WB stuff on too.... . but the 70 quid price tag is putting me off.

Failing picking one up 2nd hand, I think I might look at a single colour chart and see how I get on...... but what do they go for 2nd hand? Hardly see any available. :(
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Not sure a color chart will do what the xrite passport does without faffing about to create custom profiles. The passport works with software to automatically create a custom profile for the camera/lens/light combination and gets the colour values and relationship between colours much more accurate. This isn't always a big deal, important to product photographers though. But even when you don't use it on a shoot you can use the profile you created for say tungsten light for a particular camera as a good starting point. I use it with LR and the profiles appear in with the canned profiles like 'camera standard' 'landscape' etc. If you use the passport on a shoot you also have white balance swatches on it too. It comes into its own when you work with multiple difficult light sources, otherwise the difference is quite subtle in many instances.

But none of this is any use IMO without a calibrated monitor. You can't really tell how the image looks without calibration, and relying on the checker without calibration will lead to nasty surprises when you print.
 
lensflair said:
Not sure a color chart will do what the xrite passport does without faffing about to create custom profiles. The passport works with software to automatically create a custom profile for the camera/lens/light combination and gets the colour values and relationship between colours much more accurate. This isn't always a big deal, important to product photographers though. But even when you don't use it on a shoot you can use the profile you created for say tungsten light for a particular camera as a good starting point. I use it with LR and the profiles appear in with the canned profiles like 'camera standard' 'landscape' etc. If you use the passport on a shoot you also have white balance swatches on it too. It comes into its own when you work with multiple difficult light sources, otherwise the difference is quite subtle in many instances.

But none of this is any use IMO without a calibrated monitor. You can't really tell how the image looks without calibration, and relying on the checker without calibration will lead to nasty surprises when you print.
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Thanks for the reply Graham,

I do have my monitor calibrated now, but the main use I see for this is to crack my colour problem in LR when shooting RAW.

If I take a dual RAW + JPG shot with my D3100, I can't for the life of me get the RAW to look like the JPG no matter which camera profile I choose in LR. None of them look anything like..... (Adobe Standard, Camera Standard, Camera Landscape, Camera Vibrant etc etc).

My JPG options out of the camera are neutral and as out of the box. So to me, LR can't seem to determine my camera's colours correctly when I shoot in RAW. Especially as the same RAW files look fine in View NX. :thinking:

I'm hoping that I can get the colour card, create a custom DNG and use that so LR can reproduce the actual colours better?
 
Zarch said:
Thanks for the reply Graham,

I do have my monitor calibrated now, but the main use I see for this is to crack my colour problem in LR when shooting RAW.

If I take a dual RAW + JPG shot with my D3100, I can't for the life of me get the RAW to look like the JPG no matter which camera profile I choose in LR. None of them look anything like..... (Adobe Standard, Camera Standard, Camera Landscape, Camera Vibrant etc etc).

My JPG options out of the camera are neutral and as out of the box. So to me, LR can't seem to determine my camera's colours correctly when I shoot in RAW. Especially as the same RAW files look fine in View NX. :thinking:

I'm hoping that I can get the colour card, create a custom DNG and use that so LR can reproduce the actual colours better?
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Nikon don't give third parties their jpg profiles that the camera does so unless you use the nikon software it probably wont look the same as the in camera jpg, sometimes with some cameras you can find something close if you're lucky. But that doesn't mean the jpg colours the camera is giving you are accurate, I bet they are not in fact. So if all your talking about is getting colour that is closer to actual real life colours then the colour checker will do this. Will they be the same as the in camera jpg, I doubt it. Will it make the RAW files look like the in camera jpg, absolutely not. Because the biggest difference isn't the colours but all the other stuff like curves and noise reduction and sharpening etc. that the camera applies when it does a jpg conversion. The nikon software has access to all that info and replicates what the camera did, you will need to create a preset with adjustments made to all those other things to get it to look just like the in camera jpg.

Hope that makes sense.
 
lensflair said:
Nikon don't give third parties their jpg profiles that the camera does so unless you use the nikon software it probably wont look the same as the in camera jpg, sometimes with some cameras you can find something close if you're lucky. But that doesn't mean the jpg colours the camera is giving you are accurate, I bet they are not in fact. So if all your talking about is getting colour that is closer to actual real life colours then the colour checker will do this. Will they be the same as the in camera jpg, I doubt it. Will it make the RAW files look like the in camera jpg, absolutely not. Because the biggest difference isn't the colours but all the other stuff like curves and noise reduction and sharpening etc. that the camera applies when it does a jpg conversion. The nikon software has access to all that info and replicates what the camera did, you will need to create a preset with adjustments made to all those other things to get it to look just like the in camera jpg.

Hope that makes sense.
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Yes Graham, thanks for that.

Well we'll see how it works when it comes as I found some money down the back of the sofa (well, in my Quidco account) and have treated myself to a new full x-rite passport. :lol:
 
Well now that I've used it for a while all I can say is - sorry waited so long. All the chatter about a monitor cal aside for a moment this was a great investment. maybe not for every one but with it's LR3 integration I get true to life colors in seconds with no deliberation. Also if I want slightly off to the warmer of cooler side I just use the eye dropper on the landscape or portrait range on the others side from the color checker palette. A great tool for the cost. And I now have on order and early await my color munki, also from X-Rite, to calibrate my viewing device. Thanks for all the input, I'll never regret this purchase
 
Shame about X-Rite's customer support. I bought a ColorChecker Passport in September and sent them an email about integrating the software with Capture NX2 - I've had no answer at all.

:thumbsdown:
 
Mine is just a posh WB Card.

I find that even on my calibrated IPS screen it makes skin tones very yellow and can in some cases look worse than the Adobe Standard Profile.

Even when shooting it at perfect exposure in the same scenario as my subjects and keeping detail in every colour. Not overly impressed.

Matt
 
I love mine :) Done as lot of product style photos and it is way better than any of the supplied profiles in LR.

I haven't used it for any portraits yet....
 
Ozei said:
Shame about X-Rite's customer support. I bought a ColorChecker Passport in September and sent them an email about integrating the software with Capture NX2 - I've had no answer at all.

:thumbsdown:
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I would say this is the exception not the rule. I emailed them about the monki and had a reply same day. Then phoned them a couple times in one day, they were super in my experience.

Both products do just what is says on the tin
 
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