Trouble is: time. It takes for-EVAH to get decent color correction with Photoshop. That’s okay for landscape photographers, but what event photographers have the time to Photoshop 500 photos?

And face it: Photoshop’s autocolor is a joke.

Enter i2e, the program I use for 90% of my color correction. When you order a print from smugmug and choose autocolor, it’s going through i2e. And 90% of the time, its autocorrect is better than most people can do manually in Photoshop.

I use the image editor standard edition ($325) from Colour-Science in Switzerland. I don’t need the color management stuff in the pro edition. They have a home edition for $64 — good if you don’t process too many images.

What makes the program so sweet?

1. Rare is the image that fully automatic i2e corrections don’t improve. Photoshop’s autocorrect screws up 50% of images.

2. It does a great job of sensing memory color areas of the photo — sky, grass, and skin — and moving them toward believable values.

3. Manually tweaking is incredibly easy and fast compared to Photoshop curves. You can process hundreds of photos an hour.

What you still need Photoshop for: creative things like the bandaid tool to fix blemishes.

What I wish it had: a hover tool + info pallette like Photoshop has so you can see color values at any spot on the photo.

They’ve got a month’s free trial. You gotta try it.

Disclaimer: I’ve never even met them and don’t get anything for saying nice things about the program.