Color "vs." Shake

It depends on how skilled you are with SHAKE, and what your traditional colorist approach has been developed. No balls and knobs in SHAKE.

COLOR is way way faster as a grading tool, because that is what it is. On the other hand, its a terrible compositing tool... it is sometimes problematic to set up node trees... but plate work, it doesn't do at all.

I have tweaked elements in Shake, but it leaves a great deal to be desired in terms of subtlety and I would not attempt to grade a show through it. No way. HOwever, it remains a fantastic VFX platform.

Admittedly there is some overlap, but really, pretty marginal if you know what the strengths of each are.

jPo

Color doesn't do anything that could not be accomplished in Shake or even Final Cut Pro. But because it is designed for color correction, it is much better at this task than a package where it is a secondary feature.