# ColorMunki



## Scott O (Jan 12, 2009)

I am writing this as so many people experience problems getting their colors on the monitor to match what the printer kicks out. It seems we always have at least one thread active on this subject. Previously, I have calibrated my monitor with common products and had profiles commercially made for my printer. Sometimes worked, sometimes didn't. I use a 24" Dell monitor with an Epson 76'' printer. Despite having a carefully controlled workflow, recently my prints began to bear little resemblance to anything. I blamed the old ink. I blamed the printer. I blamed my technique. I blamed my old eyes. I blamed the alighment of the stars. I was ready to chuck to printer and start over. As a last resort I plunked down $4'' and got a ColorMunki. Absolute end of all problems. I can calibrate my monitor anytime I want and do the same with printer profiles. If I change paper or put in new ink I can re-profile. I have been printing for a very long time, and this is the best match I have ever seen between my monitor and printer. In my always humble opinion, this is one product that delivers and should be an absolute must-have for all of us! Unless of course you have another system that works for you...then you can ignore all of this!!! :lol:


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## Sid-EOS (Jan 12, 2009)

Good points; I found the Colormunki did exactly what it said on the tin.
Fast and accurate


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## Denis Pagé (Jan 12, 2009)

_Munki see Munki do_ to say so?

Do the Color Munki have any sort of memory and battery to sample colors at a clients' site or do one have to also carry a portable?


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## Brad Snyder (Jan 12, 2009)

Denis, my consumer level ($4'') version does not. It requires a USB connection and installed software.  No idea if there's a more powerful/portable version.


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## Denis Pagé (Jan 12, 2009)

Brad Snyder said:


> Denis, my consumer level ($4'') version does not. It requires a USB connection and installed software. No idea if there's a more powerful/portable version.


Thanks Brad. So my next question is:
Can it be used for color sampling using an old portable that can not be calibrated because of no LUT in the video system? I guess I can then send the reading to my MacPro afterward if the reading can be saved as some kind of file. :roll::?:

The goal is to create restaurant menus and business cards for clients by reading the color sheme of the paint on their walls...


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## Scott O (Jan 12, 2009)

Denis:  I have no idea if it will do what you want.  You are somewhat over my head on this one.  You might check the site http://www.colormunki.com/ and see if there is any mention.  Also you could send them an email question to their customer service.  I know that is not what it was designed for but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work.


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## Denis Pagé (Jan 12, 2009)

Scott O said:


> Denis: I have no idea if it will do what you want. You are somewhat over my head on this one... I know that is not what it was designed for but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work.


I know you can capture color from any surface with it and IT IS designed for it. Isn't it in the documentation?


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## Brad Snyder (Jan 12, 2009)

It can do color sampling. Don't know if video calibration is required on the portable system.

Their tech support is fairly responsive, might be worth sending them an email. 

[email protected]


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## Denis Pagé (Jan 12, 2009)

Thanks


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## Sid-EOS (Jan 13, 2009)

I don't normally sample colors, but I see the website states it is possible.
I am on a trip at present, when I get back I will check.


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 3, 2009)

Will see for myself as...
I ordered mine yesterday!  8)


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## Scott O (Feb 3, 2009)

I will be interested in your opinion Denis...hope it meets your expectations!  One thing I didn't expect is the freedom it gives me to try new papers.  No big deal.  Just whip out a new profile!


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 3, 2009)

Scott O said:


> ...Just whip out a new profile!


That's the sweet part! 
Will report back in coming weeks...


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 22, 2009)

*UPDATED* feb. 28 see ColorSampler below

As promised, here is my report:

*Cost:* ColorMunki 5''$, Delivery fees 47$, Taxes and custom fees upon receipt 15'$! Total: 847$CAN 

I received it on february 5th.  Why I was so quiet since then? Because it started as a nightmare and didn't want to give X-Rite bad press knowing they have good support. So I wanted to sort things with them beforehand.

First, it was a deception for me that it can not calibrate CRTs. Even if on their web site, I saw a page telling "...choose LCD or CRT". They should have now corrected this mistake. But I still have my old Monaco colorimeter which can calibrate CRTs but not LCDs... It is just that I wanted to sell my old device to retrieve some $.

This fact admitted, I went to the Printer/Paper calibration. I loose a few sheets of expensive paper and much ink just to find a way to print the complete charts.  So I switched to ordinary paper to save some money and ink. Even X-Rite's suggestions didn't help after a week of emailing forth and back. I told them I was able to print as I want from any application but at first, I didn't notice that it was before the ColorMunki. It is when I had to make a print as usual in Lightroom that i discovered that the inking of the paper stopped exactly after 164mm. Measuring the couple of dozen of test charts I tried to do from the ColorMunki software, guess what? They were all blank after 164mm from top of page!!!

It was then clear to me that the problem was in no way X-Rite's responsibility. As you know, rebooting is solving many problems. But even doing so didn't improve my results. Cold boot you think? Nah! Nothing! Same. :frown:

I then remembered this undocumented trick I learned in my 22 years of LAN administration/machine trouble shooting: Some five years ago, after receiving a new computer for the drawing department, the machine started to cycle rebooting endlessly. The supplier then took it back to his laboratory for a couple days and never found the tiniest trouble. Wondering what was the difference, we concluded that as I kept the power cord plugged to the wall and that he used his own to test, and as that should not make any difference as the machine was powered from both, the difference was that the machine was disconected from ground while in transit! :right: REMEMBER THIS as you never know when it will be usefull to you! :left:

So, I powered off my MacPro, powered off the printer and removed the power cords from the outlets to disconect ground for a while... Pluged back, powered on, boot, BINGO! :cheesy: Perfect color test charts with ColorMunki software. I then wrote back to X-Rite to report  with some _shame on me_ lines and suggest to add my tip to their debug page(s).

Now for the report on the working ColorMunki:

*Packaging* is designed in such a way that no finger prints will be sent to you! After removing the anti finger prints silk paper, you see a glossy 3" x 6" x 11" box. The top is black with an image of the device and the ColorMunki logo. One end is slime green and the other Royal Blue. One side Olive green (back) and the other Sky Blue (front). Bottom is Aqua Blue with description in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese in this order. English version is on the Sky Blue front. This front is a lid held in place by two 1/2" velcro circles. It doesn't give you access to your ColorMunki but is rather intended for commerce shelving revealing the ColorMunki through a clear plastic window. You have to open by breaking a transparent seal at one end of the box.

Anyone not knowing what it is would think it is a measuring tape. And a big one! Imagine a 1" wide tape 5''-'" long. It is 4" long, 3.5" tall and 2" thick. The manual is short, simple and well done. Each illustration is used once with mutlilingual sentences on the opposite pages. It is the same size as the CD envelope covering it when you open. Underneath those are the USB cable and the counterweight strap. The strap is tied to the end of the ColorMunki's carrying case zipper. The carrying case is only used to carry or hold the device in front of the monitor for calibration. You remove the case for all other operations except for self calibration which can be made with or without.

*Monitor calibration:* I was surprized to see that the software was sending full screen color patches as the ColorMunki can read patches as small as a quarter inches or so. But this make sense when you think about calibrating projectors. In this later case, you will read the projected screen away at a distance of around one and a half its height. You first make choice to calibrate an LCD or a laptop. They should be nitty picky on this as I do not see exactly why. Then there are the simple and the advanced mode. The latter let you set white point, measure ambient light and so on... Up to here it is similar to other similar devices. The software's interface is very nicely done! At anytime, it knows the dial rotation of the ColorMunki and suggest you to change it when needed illustrating the wanted position with an arrow going from the actual position to the desired one. You are always taken by hand and can't miss an option.

*Paper/Printer profiling:* Same kind of interface. In any module, each use of the ColorMunki start by asking for a self calibration. You then place it _(rotate the spectroscope)_ in a position where it reads a self contained white patch of some sort. Choose a printer and a name for your profile then print a 5' color patches on a 8.5" x 11" piece of paper. Clicking next once printed suggest you a 1' minutes countdown that you can skip if you printed the day before for example. It then ask you to read the patches row by row reporting on the success or failure after reading each strip. Click Next and it start analyzing the readings to dynamically generate another set of 5' patches to be printed. Same process again and once it refined the first reading with the second, it is ready to write the profile suggesting the printer name plus the profile name you gave it first. Done! It is said that you can input a given image to be printed to further refine the profile but I didn't trie this option yet.

*My tests of the Paper/Printer profiles:* I first tried in Lightroom with an image containing much extremely dark details and to my surprise, they were all very well distinguishable on the print! Nice I said so now time for that 5 stars shot of falls colors I took in 2''4. The gamut was so wide that I never tried it before convinced that I was about to loose to many on test prints. I gave it a go on the now profiled glossy I had on hand and was very impressed at the results. It was almost more impressive than on the monitor! OK then. Lets compare with the Archival Matte then... WOW! Side by side, the glossy and the matte papers look the very same apart from their texture.

I am totally satisfied; Simple to use and perfect results first time. No more test prints! 

There is more to it!

*The Color Sampler:* Both fun and useful this applcation let you scan the color of any objects. You place your scanned colors in custom palettes that you can name. It also suggest complementary colors based on opposites, complements or similarity. It comes with the Munsell color system and also with the Pantone system telling you the closest match in these systems.

Real life uses I have for it: Want to frame an image with a border or matte color that will perfectly fit on you wall? Just scan the wall! Print your colors and go to the artist's supplier to choose you corresponding matte. Another one I had to do: I was asked to make Business Cards and Menus for a restaurant. I do not have an USB cable long enough to go there but have a laptop. He his very old and can not be calibrated _(no LUT)_. But as the ColorMunki is not dependent on the computer of calibration written in files - remember it is self calibrating before going in action, I can take readings from the paint on the walls, mouldings and anything related to the color sheme in the restaurant. Once in the palette, I can save that palette to a file. Back home, I can read this file on my desktop and design the cards and menus such as they will fit reflect perfectly the atmosphere of the restaurant.

*UPDATE:* You can also give an image to it and it will generate a color palette based on dominant colors. This can be nice to choose a matte's color or a website's color sheme where it appears.

Let your imagination go wild!... 8)

*The digital Pouch:* This part of the software is to send other people images in such a way that they will see you images as you intended. I have not tested/tried this part yet and will let you know in a future post here.

Nightmare part two: My old Monaco sensor is still working nice under Windows _(boot camp)_ but is not recognized under Mas OS X! Hence I am left with no monitor calibration. Time to report again to X-Rite then as they buyed Monaco a while ago...

Stay tuned


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 25, 2009)

*The Digital Pouch*

In my last post, I omitted the untested Digital Pouch... Here it is.


> The digital Pouch: This part of the software is to send other people images in such a way that they will see you images as you intended.


So I tested and it is not exactly as I wrote above. What it does is that if the viewer's display was profiled in the last 3' days, it will display a black check mark in a green circle with the note "This display is profiled". If not, it will display a black X in a red circle telling that you can not thrust the colors you see.

The Digital Pouch is a JAR file (Java). It is a browser for the files you put in it. The viewer then see a film strip above, the selected image in the middle and some buttons at the bottom. On the bottom left are a +, a - and a save button. + and - act as zoom in zoom out buttons and the save button will extract the embedded image suggesting the original file name. On the right, there is the warning from the above paragraph followed at the right by a ? for help. The help file start with the explanation about proper profiling with a suggestion to visit X-Rite's site to know more. It then follows with the use of each button...

That's it.

EDIT: I am in love with this instrument and my prints were never so good first shot! The Color Picker is a very nice Plus too! Also, if you have a projector, it will do it!


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## Brad Snyder (Feb 26, 2009)

Denis, which of your printers did you profile with CM?  

I have a very low rent HP, which I'm having huge out of gamut problems, when using CM profiles in Lr, vs. just using the printer's internal color management. Since no profiles are provided by or available from HP, I'm assuming that it's not designed to work with ICC profiles. While the Color Munki staff was eager to help, they seemed to draw the line at diagnosing specific printer models.


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 26, 2009)

This is very sad Brad! :(

I am profiling my Epson Stylus Photo 128'. The equivalent of the 488' to 1188' but from back in 2''2 with less gamut and older inks than nowadays. It was the best of that time and is still respectable. I hate so much HP printers... They have the best Pen Plotters tough. And Canon printers are just bundled with cheap useless software for the masses...

I am sold to Epson _(Pro)_ printers. I still have two of them _(impact)_ printing all day long at work since 1986! Built like tanks!

Nowaday, the equivalent to my aging 128' is the 288'. Same format as mine with roll paper availability, same technology as the other x88' and same price I paid my 128' _(+- 6''-7''$)_. If Santa brought you a ColorMunki this year, may be next year...


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## Brad Snyder (Feb 26, 2009)

Yeah, that's what I figured, the Epson 128', is designed to be driven with profile aware software.

Out of curiosity, have you played with the Picture Mate; was it originally furnished with profiles? I believe it's much more consumer oriented?


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## Kiwigeoff (Feb 26, 2009)

Brad Snyder said:


> Yeah, that's what I figured, the Epson 128', is designed to be driven with profile aware software.
> 
> Out of curiosity, have you played with the Picture Mate; was it originally furnished with profiles? I believe it's much more consumer oriented?



The Picture Mate is the best buy I've made for years.... no profiles, just send it a file printer managed and it does a great job!! Mine is about worn out so am sending in for service........ (mine uses the same ink as the R18'' I believe - although the newer ones don't.)


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 26, 2009)

Brad Snyder said:


> ...Out of curiosity, have you played with the Picture Mate; was it originally furnished with profiles? I believe it's much more consumer oriented?


As Geoff said, don't bother managing it. That said, I want to try to see if the ColorMunki can print color targets on small 4" x 6" and if so, if I can scan them going much slower... Also, I don't remember at the moment if I can disable color management in its driver.


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## Scott O (Feb 26, 2009)

Denis...thank you for the amazingly detailed and thorough report on the ColorMunki, although you had me a mite worried at the beginning thinking you didn't have a good experience after my glowing report! Besides the fact that it works well, I really enjoy having the ability to try different papers now that I can do the profiles myself.  Before there was a limitation because I would have some commercial service do the profile for me, which added cost and time.  I have come to the conclusion that no or few  computer products are perfect, but this one comes close.  It solved problems with color management I was having and kept me from making the major mistake of buying a new printer to solve my issues...  Thanks for the review.


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## Bruce J (Feb 26, 2009)

Denis,

Please report back when you find out about the CM's ability to use smaller pages of color samples.  I'm looking for a new profiling tool that can do LCDs, projectors, and printers, but also need to develop printer profiles for card stock.  Thanks,


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 26, 2009)

Will do it... Stay tuned.


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## Kiwigeoff (Feb 26, 2009)

Denis Pagé said:


> As Geoff said, don't bother managing it. That said, I want to try to see if the ColorMunki can print color targets on small 4" x 6" and if so, if I can scan them going much slower... Also, I don't remember at the moment if I can disable color management in its driver.


I don't believe that there is an option to disable colour management in the Picture Mate.


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## Brad Snyder (Feb 26, 2009)

Thanks folks, I was just trying to figure out whether I had a printer capability problem, or a user (that's me) problem. Looks like it's the first. Since I'm about a mile from a nice (and reasonably priced) Noritsu with 3' minute turnaround times, I'm holding off on a more capable personal printer.

As an aside, when I do my very best to create the HP profile with Color Munki, and I've tried repeatedly, I get awful banded/posterized gamut limited prints. The interesting thing is that PS soft-proofing shows me the same thing. So, I've reverted to printer managed color which is fine for casual use.


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 27, 2009)

Bruce J said:


> Denis,
> 
> Please report back when you find out about the CM's ability to use smaller pages of color samples.  I'm looking for a new profiling tool that can do LCDs, projectors, and printers, but also need to develop printer profiles for card stock.  Thanks,


OK. I just made the test. On a side note, Geoff Walker was right stating that we can not deactivate color management on the Epson PrintMate 4" x 6" printer. So, it was useless to try 4" x 6" test charts on that one...

I had on hand an 4.5" x 8.5" scrap of the basic Epson Glossy Photo Paper. So, i used it on my Epson Stylus PHOTO 128' _(13" x 19" + roll paper)_. I just told the driver that it was a 4" x 6" sheet and successfully printed the 5' patches color chart on it. If I cut it to declared size, it show a well centered print. The color patches went just slightly over the minimum size the ColorMunki can read.

Can the ColorMunki read it? Yes!

The trick is to tape the test chart at the bottom on a surface so it won't move while reading. The nice thing is that the ColorMunki software will tell you if you misread a row putting a red border around the row being read on screen. If good, the border will turn from yellow _(unread)_ to green.

With patches so small _(around 5/16" long and 1/2" wide)_ I tought I had to go very very slowly. Doing so makes a constant speed difficult to achieve. Hint: The white lens on top of the ColorMunki is exactly aligned with the bottom hole to read color samples or a screen; Having your eyes right on top of the device while reading may help.

I missed my first pass on the first row but succeeded on the second pass. The second row took me 8 passes to read. Thinking I was going too fast, I slowed down again for the third row and it took 1' passes! Remembering how fast it is reading colors on walls and objects, I increased my speed for the fourth row and it was a first shot. The fifth took only two passes.

In conclusion
It is just trickier to read the patches but it works!
You are at the very lower limit of patches sizes as the device have an 1/4" window.
You can save paper when profiling large sheets by using smaller cut outs like 5" x 7"


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## Bruce J (Feb 27, 2009)

Thanks Denis.  Very helpful!  The CM will now go on my wish list :lol:  Maybe the Easter Bunny will be unusually generous this year.

Another question occurs to me: have you, or anyone else, had experience using the CM to profile dual monitors?  As I think I mentioned earlier, I'm looking for a single device to profile dual LCD monitors, laptops, projectors, and printers.  I'm currently using a Spyder2 for my monitor and laptop and various software/scanner solutions for the printer profiles.  It all works, but no current projector solution and the printer profile solution is awkward.  Thanks again,


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 27, 2009)

The ColorMunki instructions for dual monitors tell to simply drag the application to the second monitor to profile it.


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 27, 2009)

*3-Seat Licence Policy Change*

I just received an email from X-Rite announcing the 3-Seat Licence Policy Change. This is great news for me and my LAN/WAN! 
If you do not want to read it, it is now unlimited seats for computers you own.

EDIT: Also, the training videos are now available in 7 languages rather than english only.


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## Brad Snyder (Feb 27, 2009)

CM will work with LCD monitors/laptops (but not CRTs), projectors, and printers. As well as being able to sample colors from anything you can point it at. 

The multi-monitor capability of CM is not dependent on CM, but on your system. In order for Windows to handle dual monitor calibration, you need to introduce dual LUTs (look-up tables) into the equation. I do this by running two mediocre spec video adapters in my desktop system, each connected to an identical CRT monitor. I'm told there are video adapters with integral dual LUTs, but every time I try to verify that for myself, I get lost in the marketing speak.  I actually run a third monitor, but it's for non-color ctitical  tasks, it just runs incorrectly calibrated, hanging off the second port of one of the calibrated video adapter/monitor combinations. 

In practice, it's a lot simpler than it sounds, but just having a dual port video adapter isn't enough. You need an separate LUT for each calibrated device. 

Mac, is apparently quite different.


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## Bruce J (Feb 28, 2009)

Denis, thanks for getting back.  Just what I needed to know.

Brad, thanks also.  I've been trying to get my head around the dual monitor calibration business for awhile and haven't been able to find anyone willing to guarantee that a particular single card will work.  I currently run two identical monitors off a single card, but will probably eventually go to your solution of two video cards.  Appreciate the succinct description.  Out of curiosity, what video cards are you running?


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## Brad Snyder (Feb 28, 2009)

nVidia 5''' series. Quite old, I had a mobo failure about 2 years ago, and rather than replace all my adapter cards too, I bought an 'obsolete' mobo as an economy measure so I could reuse all the adapters. Actually, now that I think about it, one of the video cards is AGP(?speed), the other is first gen PCI. 

I'm quite happy with the performance of my system in general, the two main stressors are FlightSim, (I don't do any other high frame rate gaming), and Lightroom.
FlightSim is seamless, even in dual monitor, and Lightroom is tolerable with my fairly low volume of work. I'll update eventually. As we all know anything you buy this morning is obsolete this afternoon, so rather than choosing a time to upgrade, I tend to wait for necessity to raise its head, and let the timing choose me. I'd say my main frustration at present is two WD external drives that insist on time-out 'sleeping' and take about 7 seconds to wake-up.


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## Bruce J (Mar 1, 2009)

Thanks again Brad.  Good info.  I apply the same two stresses on my systems, with the additional complication of running two systems that are separated by about 4'' miles.  Keeping everything in sync is sometimes a pain.  My update philosophy is about the same as yours.

At LR 2.3, I'm seeing fairly slow slider response in Develop and fairly slow preview update.  Only annoying when I have a lot of images to process, but I can see that system update is going to be needed before too long.  But, the ColorMunki looks like it would be quite useful and I'd really like a bigger format printer and then there's that new lens that would be just the thing . . .  The list never gets any shorter.  Cheers,


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## Denis Pagé (Aug 11, 2009)

UPDATE​


This topic is all about the ColorMunki Photo and is covering part of the ColorMunki Design _(same device other software bundle)_.

Note that there is now the ColorMunki Create spectrophotometer which is far less expensive _(±15'$)_. It does monitor profiling and also have the Pantone system and can check if the colors in you image will be reproduced by your printer/paper combination.


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