Product Description

Combining the powerful color capabilities of the ColorChecker Passport and Adobe Imaging solutions into your RAW workflow will undeniably reduce your image processing time and improve quality control. Quickly and easily capture accurate color, instantly enhance portraits and landscapes and maintain color control and consistency from capture to edit. Achieve superior color results in a fraction of the time. ColorChecker Passport combines 3 photographic targets into one pocket size protective case that self-stands to adjust to any scene. Together with the software you get the ultimate in functionality, flexibility and portability. Starting with an accurate white balance ensures the colors you capture are true. Use the White Balance Target to create a custom in-camera white balance for a set of images and eliminate the need to correct each image later.With the Enhancement Target you can creatively refine the color of your images with just a few clicks. Add warmth to skin tones. Boost the deep greens or blues in a landscape. Put warmth and depth of film back into your digital photos. Or use as a visual reference for judging, controlling and editing images for shadow details, highlight clipping or color shifts. Adobe Imaging users – Lightroom, Photoshop, ACR or Elements – gain a new level of accuracy and precision. Use the Classic Target with the included camera calibration Lightroom Plug-In or desktop application to automatically create a DNG profile of your camera’s response to the scene. You’ll get consistent and repeatable results from image to image and camera to camera even if you return to the same location later. It’s fast, it’s effortless and it will bring your color control to a whole new level. The Classic Target also provides a built-in point of visual color reference and is compatible with Adobe DNG Editor. ColorChecker Passport is so convenient and portable you’ll want to take it with you to every shoot!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1363 in Consumer Electronics
• Color: Black
• Brand: X-Rite
• Model: MSCCPP
• Dimensions: 4.92" h x .4" w x 3.54" l, .30 pounds

Features

• Compatible Software For use with MAC or PC and DNG profiles,LightRoom 2.0 or newer,Adobe Camera RAW 4.5 or newer
• Macintosh MacOS X 10.4.11 or 10.5.X (with the latest update installed),512MB RAM, G4 Processor or higher (G5 recommended), 350MB of available disk space application ,Monitor resolution of 1024x768 pixels or higher
• Windows, Microsoft Windows XP 32 or 64 bit (with latest Service Pack installed) or Microsoft Windows Vista 32 or 64 bit (with latest Service Pack installed), 512MB RAM, 200 MB of available disk space, Monitor resolution of 1024x768 pixels or higher
• Compatible Software For use with DNG profiles, LightRoom 2.0 or newer , Adobe Camera RAW 4.5 or newer
• ,Humidity range: 85% or less, non-condensing , Temperature range for normal use of the case: 32 ¿ 104 degrees Fahrenheit / 0 ¿ 40 degrees Celsius

Customer Reviews

Perfect - everything I expected
Im a professional photographer and use the digital-camera color checker, which is a rather large and bulky device to say the least, it is also complex to create and apply profiles.

The new X-rite passport ROCKS..! plain and simple.. it is easy to use, naively with lightroom, and easy with PhaseOne Capture. The quality of the profiles is not quite matching the digital camera checker, but nobody in their right mind would expect that. The passport create a very use-able profile in a matter of seconds.

Here is how it works.

1. snap a shot with the passport in the same light as you are working.

2. select image in Lightroom, then select EXPORT and export to X-rite.. this will create a profile, I suggest naming the profile by the date and album it applies to.

3. restart lightroom, go to develop, select the profile in camera profile, then sync to the rest of the album.

NOTE - if you have several lighting environments in the same folder, shoot a passport shot for each light change, then apply to the images which matches that passport.

The card also have a set of off-white patches for warming or cooling portraits and another set for landscape, use them to set the whitepoint in a image to warm or cool as desired.

X-rite have made available a very well designed instruction video for download from their site.

Overall, this is a very successful product, it does what I expected and it does it well. If you shoot digital and am concerned about color management, this is a MUST HAVE product.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Great way to calibrate color
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1UJXM7OB90O0P Shows how the product can perform white balance, color calibration and dual-illuminant color calibration using the included software and Adobe Lightroom on a Windows 7 PC. 4 stars as the out-of-the-box experience is poor -- not until you have gone to the website, read the instructions and downloaded & watched the video examples will you know what to do.

Color Management For Dummies (and smart folks)
There's no need to say more about how easy it is to use the colorchecker - open it, photograph it, close it and use it for tweaking the result in Lightroom or Photoshop. I've been using the small Gretag-Macbeth color card to do the same thing with fair results. And I have a large white/gray card that I thought I'd take everywhere but don't. The colorchecker is much more convenient than the large card and it's much harder to misplace than the little Gretag-Macbeth card. I don't use the "creative" patches. It's not that they aren't useful but I simply adjust the color temperature by degrees until I like it.

That being said, something the other reviewers haven't mentioned but which is very important is the color management and exposure education that comes with this device. Someone (more likely, several someones) spent a considerable amount of time putting together a very good course in color and exposure management that deserves applause and serious study. You can pay a lot for one or more of the many books devoted to exposure and color management. But, the instruction provided with this device - all free and in a lot fewer pages than the books - in the help manual, on the web site and in the downloadable video, is wonderful. It's keyed to the device itself so it's immediately practical and usable. As you read or watch the instructional material, the workflow is explained and makes sense. It will also lead you to understanding other features of your camera - such as the importance and use of the histogram - that may still be a bit mysterious. The device will help you understand "clipping" - there are "clipping" patches on one of the cards.

After reading the instructional materials, you'll know why it's important to calibrate your monitor and printer. If you're going to buy this (fairly expensive) card, then you either have or will be getting a device to calibrate your monitor - your eye is not good enough. Use good paper and it will come with a website link that will give you a profile for use with your printer.

Finally, the device does not correct a bad exposure. You can do a lot in lightroom or photoshop but the best you can hope for is more work. If the image is badly over or under exposed, nothing in any editing program is going to make it good. So - pay attention to the instruction on histogram use (and read a little on the subject in one of the many websites available) and you'll have good exposures. It's fundamental to good images and to use of this device. That's where the explanation of how to use the histogram comes in.

It's a great convenience to have this thing readily available and so easy to use. It really will speed up color management and improve your images. Combine that with the free educational materials that come with it and it's a five star product. Highly recommended.