Product Reviews

Photoshop users who have envied one-click enhance features for digital images in such programs as iPhoto now have a solution of their own. The iCorrect range of Photoshop plug-in filters from Pictographics International makes it possible to colour-correct and enhance images instantly and automatically, while maintaining a professional approach to colour management.

Invoking iCorrect Professional 4.0.2 from the Filter menu calls up a new window showing a full-image preview pane and various check-boxes, buttons and a pop-up menu down the right-hand side. By default, the plug-in attempts to locate the white and black points in the image automatically and locks on to them. You can then adjust basic brightness and contrast values by clicking on Less and More buttons.

This is pretty pedestrian stuff, even by PhotoDeluxe standards, but then you move on to iCorrect Professional's ingenious 'memory colours': Neutrals (greys), Skin, Foliage and Sky. These are preset colour ranges that are subjectively considered to be correct. For example, you know a correct grey shouldn't suffer from a tinted caste, or that correct grass and leaves should appear to be green. You select a memory colour, then click on an area in the image preview that you think should match it.

Clicking on the Preferences button allows you to customise the four preset memory colours and create six more of your own. You could identify a common feature across multiple shots, such as the colour of someone's dress, create a memory colour for it and make it consistent on every image regardless of indoor-outdoor lighting conditions, changing

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exposure and so on.

If you have to adjust a large number of similar images with the same settings, iCorrect Professional lets you do this by saving your adjustments to a ColorCircuit data file. The ColorCircuit utility uses this information to conduct the same iCorrect enhancements as a batch process.

Present and correct

These smart functions are expanded in the more expensive iCorrect EditLab 4.0.1. Again, the plug-in presents a preview pane, but this time the controls on the right are organised into tabbed sets. You can opt for a quick-enhance by clicking on the SmartColor button, which has a similar effect to using Photoshop's Auto Levels, Auto Contrast and Auto Color commands all at the same time. It's then possible to fine-tune or override these settings with sliders in each tab group.

Memory colours in iCorrect EditLab are handled in a different manner, this time using points around a colour ring. This lets you pick a general hue in the image using an eyedropper tool and assign any memory colour to it afterwards. Skin, Foliage and Sky memory colours are preset for you, and another three blank buttons are available for custom memory colours.

EditLab can export your settings to ColorCircuit for batch correction, but can also export your settings as an ICC profile. This way, you could apply the same colour correction to any image by assigning your custom ICC profile to it within Photoshop.

Unfortunately, the iCorrect interface in both plug-ins has no consistency with Adobe's Photoshop product line. This clumsy approach extends to the plug-ins' Preferences, which are separate from the main interface, making it even less intuitive. Another irritation is that several important features, such as switching between image, ColorCircuit and ICC profile modes in EditLab, are hidden until you discover the secret option-click action required to reveal them.

Once past these hurdles, though, Pictographics' iCorrect plug-ins have the potential to accelerate colour correction and enhancement with minimal effort and almost zero Photoshop knowledge. If you have to deal with large numbers of images on a regular basis, they could save you a great deal of time.