Depth Scanner — Mac download

Editors who need quick depth mattes without leaving After Effects reach for Depth Scanner.

Depth map generation — automatic analysis of a frame to identify the parts closest to the camera, using artificial intelligence.

Source material — video clips and photographs; the plugin handles both equally.

Host application — Adobe After Effects, listed in the standard plugin documentation alongside other Blace Plugins tools.

Soft-focus footage yields soft edges

Most early errors are not about the plugin. They are about what gets fed into it.

• Expecting clean edges on soft-focus footage. A depth scanner mac plugin reads contrast and texture. A blurry background gives it nothing to latch onto. Sharpen the source or accept that the matte will need hand-refining.
• Throwing it at low-contrast, flat-lit shots. The AI needs separation between planes. If the subject and background share the same tonal range, the depth map turns into a grey soup. A quick levels adjustment on a guide layer before analysis often fixes this.
• Assuming it works like a 3D render. This is not a z-depth pass from a 3D package. It estimates depth from a single 2D image. Parallax setups will need the matte blurred and feathered — otherwise objects tear apart at the seams.
• Ignoring the alpha channel. If your footage already has transparency, pre-compose it with a solid background. Depth Scanner reads the visible pixels. A transparent void confuses the analysis and produces junk near the edges.
• Running analysis on the full comp instead of the source clip. Analyse the raw footage layer, not a pre-comp with transformations, masks, or colour corrections stacked on top. The fewer variables between the pixels and the plugin, the cleaner the result.

Contrast-crush a hidden guide layer

A few habits turn the plugin from a one-click toy into something you actually rely on.

• Guide layer trick. Duplicate your source, crush the blacks and boost contrast until objects visibly separate, then hide the layer. Feed the original to Depth Scanner but use the high-contrast dupe as a visual reference for tweaking the matte afterward. The plugin does not need the guide — you do.
• Post-blur stack. A raw depth map is noisy. A fast box blur set to 2–4 pixels, followed by a slight median filter, kills the chatter without softening the edges you actually need. Keep this as a preset; you will apply it to almost every output.
• Invert for transitions. Depth-based wipes work both ways. Invert the matte and you instantly flip which plane moves first. Two transition directions from one analysis pass.
• Channel packing for later. If you are building a template, pre-comp the depth matte and export it as a separate render pass. You can reuse the same matte for a depth-of-field blur, a fog layer, and a parallax move without re-analysing anything.

Edge refinement for sharp plane separation

Out of the box, Depth Scanner aims for a general-purpose result. Three adjustments make it suit your footage faster.

• Edge refinement. The default tends toward soft transitions between planes. For anything that needs sharp separation — a depth scanner after effects mac project with hard-edged graphics, for instance — dial this up before the first analysis. It saves you from painting matte edges frame by frame.
• Depth range clamping. The plugin does not know where your scene ends. If you are working with a shallow set, clamp the far plane so the matte does not waste half its tonal range on infinity. Your depth-of-field blur will look immediately more controlled.
• Analysis resolution. Full-res analysis on a 4K clip is slow and rarely necessary. Half or quarter resolution still produces a usable matte for most tasks. Keep full-res for final delivery passes; use quarter for blocking out parallax rigs and testing transitions.

If you also work with tracking markers or QR-style elements, a 1d 2d barcode scanner workflow can complement this — drop a printed marker into the scene during production, and you have a known reference point to align the generated depth matte against your 3D camera solve.

Output — a usable depth map built from a single frame analysis, no external round-tripping required.

• Adobe After Effects
• Interface language: English