Use CastCor to correct photo colors

If the colors of your latest digital photos are less than accurate, then most photo editors will allow you to try and resolve this manually. Tweak RGB here, maybe HSV there, and with a little work there’s a good chance you can improve the situation. If that sounds too much like hard work, though, you might prefer a tool like CastCor, which aims to correct color problems almost entirely automatically.

There’s nothing too special about this, of course -- most photo editors include at least some automated correction tools -- but CastCor delivers more than most: “White Point Auto”, “Grey Point Auto”, “Contrast Auto”, “Auto Color Enhance”, “Highlight-Shadow Enhance”, “Adaptive Equalisation”, “Luminance Correction”, and more.

And these really are automated, too. So unlike some of the competition, you don’t choose an option and then have to navigate a complicated dialog box, setting a host of other parameters. It’s just a matter of clicking Tools, and viewing the right-hand preview window to see the results. If you like it, click Save; otherwise, click Undo and try again.

Does it work? Like most similar tools, the best we can say is “sometimes”. CastCor did make a real improvement to some of our test images, but as usual with this kind of tool, it made others considerably worse. (Although you can always fall back to the usual manual slider adjustments as a last resort.)

And the program’s slightly unconventional interface didn’t help, either. Expect to spend a couple of minutes exploring before you figure out how everything works.

The sheer number of automated color correction tools on offer here does make CastCor stand out from the crowd, though. If you’re not happy with your current photo editor’s color adjustment options, then the program could be a welcome addition to your system.

Photo Credit: Laborant/Shutterstock