Precision Shot Matching & Color Balance

LUMERIX

Match one shot to another in seconds, then keep control. LUMERIX compares a reference frame with the current shot using robust frame statistics and fills in the correction for you. Many shots? Tick Auto Match on the reference and every other shot matches it by itself. Built for video editors and colorists, not photo editing.

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Make every shot look like it belongs to the same scene.

Full guide

What it helps with

Shots from different cameras, lighting or even different scenes take on the same look
Exposure, white balance, contrast and saturation matched in one press
Skin tones and highlights stay protected

Why it is strong

Measured, not guessed: the same result every time
Runs on your computer; your footage never leaves it
Your own nodes are never touched

How a match works

From target footage to the reference look

Choose the shot that has the look you want, let LUMERIX analyze it, and apply the match to your target footage.

Target · S-Log3

01The shot you want to fix: flat S-Log3, as log footage looks before grading

Reference

02The look you want to match

Target · S-Log3LUMERIX

03Result: target footage matched with LUMERIXDrag across the picture to compare

Real plug-in output on real footage, not a mockup. The Target is shown in S-Log3 / S-Gamut3.Cine (Sony's published transfer function applied to the clip), brought to Rec.709 with a standard color space transform, then matched once from the reference and applied to the whole shot at full strength. All clips are Full HD.

How to use LUMERIX

Two ways. Your own nodes are never touched. Do not use Copy Grade / Paste Grade for this: they replace all the nodes of the target shot.

Many shots: one click

Run Workspace > Scripts > LUMERIX Batch Match
Click the reference shot and mark the target shots (or Select All)
Press Match Selected Shots: done

One shot: with the plug-in node

On the reference shot (LUMERIX is its node) press Analyze Reference
On the shot to fix, press Apply Match
Fine-tune under ADVANCED > Fine Tune (optional)

What it does

Reference analysis

Luminance percentiles, black level, saturation, and the color balance of shadows, midtones and highlights, measured with medians so a few extreme pixels do not skew the result.

Exposure and contrast

Works in linear light. Contrast is matched with a curve pivoting at 18% grey; exposure is solved after it so the two do not fight each other.

White balance

Temperature and tint are estimated from neutral-weighted chromaticity ratios, not a naive average of RGB.

Tonal color balance

Separate shadow, midtone and highlight bias when the two shots differ in how they color their tones.

Skin protection

Likely skin is found by hue on the vectorscope skin line in Y'CbCr. Skin keeps its color while its brightness still follows the match.

Skin match

Goes one step beyond protection: it measures how far this shot's skin still is from the reference's skin and nudges only skin-like pixels toward it, keeping their brightness. Best for the same person in the same scene. Off by default; Auto Match turns it on.

Highlight protection

Bright areas keep their hue and are rolled off instead of clipping when the match brightens the shot.

Dynamic-range aware

For SDR footage the solver will not push the top of the frame into clipping. HDR and log workflows are supported through the Input Encoding setting, which includes the ARRI LogC3, Sony S-Log3, Canon C-Log3, Panasonic V-Log and RED Log3G10 curves (the curve only, not the colour gamut).

Controlled strength

Match Strength blends the original and the corrected frame in linear light. Reset and Show Original are one click.

Same-shot, reframed and moving shots

When a shot shows the same scene as the reference, even punched in, cropped or with a camera that moved a little, LUMERIX finds where it sits in the reference, compares only the part both show, and also copies what a single correction cannot: tone curves, saturation that changes with brightness and color by tone. It checks that corresponding areas really agree before it trusts this, and ignores what moved. For another angle or another scene it does not pretend that the pictures are the same: it uses look transfer instead (next feature). It needs a reference captured with this version and no setting.

Different scenes: look transfer

Use a reference from another place or subject and your shot takes on its look: brightness, contrast, warmth and color richness. LUMERIX applies the usual correction, then moves the colors of your shot onto the colors of the reference with a smooth table stored in the node (and in the LUT for Batch Match), and tunes the color richness to the reference's. Skin tones keep their own hue and color richness, so faces do not turn grey or green, and the shadows and highlights are guarded so they are not crushed or blown out. Nothing to set: Apply Match, Auto Match and Batch Match do it when the shot cannot be placed in the reference's scene. Your shot does not become the reference: a teal sky in the reference does not appear in a shot that has no sky, and Match Strength scales it all down if it is too strong.

Batch Match for many shots

Click the reference shot, mark the targets and press Match Selected Shots. Every target is measured against the reference with the LUMERIX engine and gets one steady correction, attached as a 3D LUT to a free node, so nothing flickers and nothing is pressed per shot. Flat log clips are opened up to the reference first, and every shot gets one short result line. Your own nodes are never replaced. Set the strength once for the whole batch.

The interface

1. REFERENCE: Analyze Reference
2. MATCH: Apply Match, Auto Match, Match Strength, Show Original, Check Match, Result, Match Confidence, Review
INPUT FORMAT (closed): Input Encoding, Input Gamut (only for log / wide-gamut footage)
ADVANCED — Fine Tune: Exposure, Temperature, Tint, Contrast, Saturation, Reset
ADVANCED — Color Structure: Black Level, Shadow Bias, Midtone Bias, Highlight Bias
ADVANCED — Protection: Skin Protection, Skin Match, Skin Tone Shift, Highlight Protection, Shadow Protection

What it is - and is not

It is a deterministic algorithm. It is not machine learning and makes no such claim.
It matches statistics and color. Two shots with very different content (a face versus a landscape) take on the reference's look (brightness, contrast, warmth, color richness) but do not become the same picture.
It cannot recreate lighting that was never captured. If a subject moves into shadow or a different light source than the reference frame, that difference is real scene content - matching corrects a systematic color offset between two takes, not a change in the scene itself.
Auto Match takes sample frames across each shot and gives each shot one correction. A shot whose content or lighting is very different from the reference takes on the reference's look rather than an exact match: check it by eye and lower Match Strength if it is too strong.
It is a fast, editable starting point for a grade, not a substitute for your eye.
All analysis runs on your computer. Reference frames and footage are never uploaded.

Requirements

Windows 10 or 11 (x64)
DaVinci Resolve with OpenFX support (see the compatibility list on the Installation page for the versions that have actually been tested)
Processing uses all CPU cores and, on NVIDIA GPUs, CUDA when Resolve renders on the GPU
macOS is planned; the code is structured for it but no macOS build is offered yet