I just released another addon onto the Blender Market - the Color Matching Analyzer (now the Shot Matcher - see below)!
The biggest struggle I had in my early Blender days was merging my render on top of a background image. For some reason, the render and the background didn’t match, even when I used the same lighting setup. I couldn’t put my finger on why. So I studied Blender for visual effects and compositing (see here), I realized the game-changer in integration: color range. Every image has its own color range. One image’s black and white values won’t be the same as another’s. And my render and background had different color ranges, hence the feeling that it still looked fake.

So I knew the problem, but I lacked the solution. Clamping both the render and background image values just led to more color data lost, and guess-timating the values lacked any sense of certainty. So I created my own solution to speed up the compositing workflow, and the Color Matching Analyzer was born.
Here’s my trailer for it :
Check it out on the Blender Market. I hope it helps you like it helped me.
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Update 1.0.1
I included 2.80 beta compatibility, and fixed a small bug with empty images. I plan to keep developing this addon, especially since it’s one I plan on using in my own work. Check it out!
Update 1.1.0
I updated the compositor functionality to be clearer concerning what the node group does, how to use it, etc. The price has dropped to $8! Check it out and message me if you have any questions.
Update 2.0.0
Now you can analyze videos! It has a frame start, end, and step variables to make the calculation more intuitive and efficient. I updated the calculation algorithm to take saturation better into account. The UI also has a sleeker layout.
Update 2.1.0
I rnamed the add-on from “Color Matching Analyzer” to “Shot Matcher,” to be more correct to the terms of the film industry (“shot matching” is when a colorist changes a shot’s color range/dynamics to match another). Also some UX updates.
Here’s the new BlenderMarket link: link removed by owner, no longer on Blender Market
Update 3.1.1
Lots of updates since the last post, sorry!
- Background/Foreground matching - now you can match the color range of a foreground “layer” (movie clip or image) to a background layer’s color range.
- UI facelift - sleeker, incorporates layers, and can select images or videos as layers without having them being currently viewed.
- Color picker - now it updates the colors as you are picking, making it easier to see that it’s working and you found a good color.
- Error fixes - corrected a 2.8x variable declaration and management of intermediate files
Here’s the new trailer:
2 Likes
A new update as of January 2022 - after a long time, I finally figured out a future-proof way to calculate the render result as a layer!!
Warning: Through an API limitation, the render result can only be accessed if the newest render is viewed at least once in the Blender image editor. If not, it’ll just give a one-pixel image of pink (usually to mean a missing image). It can also mess with the memory if you run the analysis without looking at the render result. In short, just look at your new render at least once in the image editor, then you can analyze it as a layer. I know this is a rare use case, but wanted to make sure you were aware. Once bgl is deprecated and the gpu module in Blender is fully supported, I’ll figure out a way to workaround this.
Shot Matcher is now released for free and free to access and contribute! It is no longer on the Blender Market. Find releases here: semagnum/shot-matcher
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