Color correction is an essential for post production which includes in the making of motion pictures, television programs, videos, photography and digital art.

I do color correction most in videos, and followed by photography.
In video, color correction not only mean correcting an incorrect color or an unwanted color. To me, by doing color correction, it is able to enhance the video, best to describe the temperature and the situation in the scene. For example, if the scene looks yellowish, it shows warm, if its blue, it means cool. By changing the color of the scene, it will also affects the contrast.
That's just base on my experience, it could be more.

In photography, which I'm so into it recently, I found color correcting is so important until I can't describe it.
If you noticed, sometimes camera cannot get the true color, as in what you see and what you will get after captured. Especially during indoor, under yellow light, your captured image looks extremely yellow, of course, if you are using Flash that's a different story. All DLSR has a White Balance setting, but still you might not get the desired color, custom white balance setting will help, but not very helpful.

Example:

This is original image before color correction, as you can see, her white shirt turns yellowish, like her shirt has not been washed for months. YUCK!

Yeah! Use "TOP" to wash your clothes, shiny white! Actually, this is the true color.

This is not an easy job. Because this photo was not optimized for editing.


If you plan to edit the photo afterward, use RAW, RAW format is optimized for editing purpose.

Example:

This is original RAW photo, looks ugly huh? Greenish...

Much better! The Pinky family! Pink Panther 2 coming soon!

This is slightly simpler compared to compressed JPEG, more editing settings, even lens correction is possible like Chromatic Aberration.

Hope you have understand more about color correction.
Oh by the way, Happy New Year!