blackest Loc: Ireland

Seems they have added a page to the passport namely an 18% gray card.

Is it worth the increased price?

MichaelH Loc: NorCal via Lansing, MI

It will go on periodic sale just like the older edition. One is supposed to replace it every few years as the colors may change due to bright light exposure. If your current one is older than a few years old just watch for it to go on sale. (And don't leave it exposed to bright sunlight when not using it.)

My guess is that one of the gray patches on the colored swatches will work just as well for White Balance - it will just be a smaller sized patch. One of the group of gray patches is "true" gray and the others are for "warming" or "cooling" skin tones.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

I often wonder how long you have to expose the color charts to light before they actually become a liability in your color workflow. I know the recommendation is every couple of years or so, but I use mine in a shot and then put it away. So if it's exposed to the environment for only a minute or so during a setup, how many times do you need to do that to equal a few years?

I downloaded the updated software for the new version and it lists one new feature to the update is "Added the ability to track the age of the ColorChecker after being put in use", so maybe that will answer my question when I next fire up a Color Checker shot using my original kit.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

It really doesn't matter if it drifts off a few delta E for most photographers. As long as the monitor is close to the passport (dead on from the factory or not), which is difficult to tell because the passport is reflective and the monitor is luminescent, and you calibrate your printer to come close to the passport you are good to go. I don't even try to get prints exact because my luster, metallic, to glossy photo paper doesn't match the texture (read that as light scattering) of the passport anyway. Finally, I'm dealing with pleasing color, not exact color matches, so my prints are usually "enhanced" compared to what the camera sees.

Now, when I was working with catalog photographers to get the color in the catalog as close to an exact match as possible, especially for ladies clothing, then we needed well calibrated targets. We started with the MacBeth color test checker and then went to a 4000 square swatch. The number one reason clothing bought online was returned was color match.

Haydon

Great advise. As already mentioned previously, if it's really important blackest, this product periodically goes on sale.

blackest Loc: Ireland

I've gone with the original , which should be the 2014 colors, I do have a chinese made macbeth chart which doesn't quite match the xrite profiles. Most patches are visually close but there are a few differences. 5th patch on the top row is quite gray and the color it should be is more of a purple tone. The gray tones are all different on the bottom row giving 6 different white balance temperatures and tints.

The back of the chart has the rgb values of each patch so I made my own version of the chart and it's not matching. Which is why I've decided i need a higher quality version of the chart.

I have several cameras that I use and each will be different in how they record color so to match these I need a good reference. It's going to be interesting to see how good the xrite targets are. They still seem expensive for what they are but when your spending quite a few hours trying to get accurate color it's relatively low.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Some very good points... I used a MacBeth color board also before the Xrite came out. Did going beyond that with the other make a difference in fewer returns of online purchases? I am wondering what the difference was, considering most online shoppers don't have calibrated monitors. Wouldn't that negate all the color detail work you did?

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

It was a big issue so some of the catalogers would send cloth samples or whole dresses to our prepress departments for color match. The problem was that the gravure printing color space was smaller than film color space and gravure is not the most precise print method so it was tough to hold a critical color once it was achieved over tens of thousands of catalogs. To answer the question, yes, it made a significant difference at the time. As you say, today most people buy online and the monitors are all over the place, but kind of follow srgb, so it somehow works.

Here's some interesting trivia. The major catalogers saved a lot on photo studio costs once they found out we could modify the colors of dresses in a photograph. So, they would shoot a model with one color dress and send us, say, 5 of the same style dress, but in different colors. We would "photoshop" (this was proprietary software long before Adobe was around) the color and drop the same model with the same dress in different colors in their catalogs.

blackest Loc: Ireland

3D Lut creator is very good at this, you can target a particular hue and just change that to what ever you want it to be.

Just got the xrite color checker passport photo today and made my first camera profiles with it, not huge changes but improved over adobe standard or embedded.