---
title: "Color Cast"
url: https://postproduction.studio/en/glossary/color-cast
language: en
description: "A color cast is an unintended, often unwanted color shift affecting an entire image or substantial portion of it, where what should appear neutral (gray..."
updated: 2026-10-25
---

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# Color Cast

A color cast is an unintended, often unwanted color shift affecting an entire image or substantial portion of it, where what should appear neutral (gray, white) instead carries a tint toward red, green, blue, magenta or another hue. Color casts arise from various sources: incorrect white balance during capture (the most common cause), mixed lighting on set (interior tungsten plus daylight from a window), reciprocity failure in long-exposure stills, faulty filtration, color spill from nearby objects, or codec quantization in 8-bit chroma. Color casts can be intentional too — a colorist may deliberately introduce a warm cast for golden-hour memory or a cool cast for sci-fi atmosphere — but the term usually denotes a problem to be fixed. Detection methods include: examining a known-neutral reference in the frame (gray card, white shirt, asphalt), using the parade waveform to check if R, G and B traces match in shadows and mid-grays, or using the vectorscope to check if neutral regions cluster at the origin. Correction is done with the white balance picker (sample a known-neutral point), with primary color wheels (shifting lift/gamma/gain in the opposite direction of the cast), or with HSL qualifier (isolate the cast color and shift only it). Persistent casts after grading often indicate a deeper issue — a faulty in-camera LUT, mistaken IDT in ACES, or incorrect color space tag on the source file.

Color Grading, ImageColorist, DITColor Correction, Color Grading

## Related terms

[White Balance](https://postproduction.studio/en/glossary/white-balance)[Primary Color Grading](https://postproduction.studio/en/glossary/primary-color-grading)[Color Correction](https://postproduction.studio/en/glossary/color-correction)

Color gamuts plotted on the CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram. Wider gamut = more reproducible colors.