colourMatik 🎨

Match the colours of one clip to another — accurately, and fully on your own machine.

colourMatik recolours a target clip so its look matches a reference clip, and applies the result as a real, named colourMatik effect inside Premiere Pro / After Effects — with a built-in Intensity slider. Nothing is uploaded; every frame stays on your computer.

It does the job of aescripts' AI Color Match, with two things it doesn't have: measurable colour accuracy (ΔE00) and a choice between a precise classical match and a learned cinematic AI grade — the engine measures both and keeps whichever is best.

by Sevki Bugra Ozbek · catheadai.com

---

Two match types

Mode	What it does	Best for
Accurate	Classical colour science (Monge–Kantorovich / IDT / smoothed 3D-LUT) plus a SegFormer scene model that matches region-to-region (sky↔sky, skin↔skin). Auto-selected by measured ΔE00.	Matching shots from the same shoot — highest measurable accuracy.
Cinematic AI 🧠	CanonCGT (CVPR 2026), a learned reference-grading model, running on your GPU (Apple Silicon / MPS).	A tasteful, photorealistic look transfer across very different scenes.

Both bake into a single flicker-free 3D LUT that the native effect applies, and both are driven by the same live Intensity slider (0–200 %).

How accurate?

Measured by applying a known colour distortion and recovering it (ΔE00 = perceived colour difference; < 1 = the eye can't tell). Verified against an independent .cube reader.

Scenario	Before ΔE00	After ΔE00
Linear difference (white balance + primaries)	4.73	0.03
Non-linear difference (tone curve + saturation)	9.45	0.06
Different scene (distribution match)	9.45	0.70
Real H.264 video (end-to-end)	9.50	0.32

---

Install (macOS, Apple Silicon)

Easiest — one file, double-click (notarized, no warnings):

1. Download colourMatik-mac.zip (catheadai.com).
2. It unzips itself on download — double-click colourMatik Installer.
3. Enter your Mac password once. It then installs everything in the background (about 10–20 minutes) and shows a notification when it's ready. Then restart Premiere Pro.

It's signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens with no "unidentified developer" warning. It sets up the engine + AI, the panel, and the effect, and keeps the engine running automatically.

Manual (from source):

git clone https://github.com/iyiailerobotu-sudo/colourmatik-releases.git colourMatik
cd colourMatik
./setup.sh            # venv + deps + local-AI model  (or: ./setup.sh --no-ai)
./install-panel.sh    # installs the Premiere UXP panel
./install-effect.sh   # installs the native colourMatik effect

Then restart Premiere Pro. The engine runs automatically after install; start it manually any time with ./colourmatik-app.

Updating: the panel updates itself in one click (it checks at most once a day). By hand: double-click update.command (in the installed ~/colourMatik folder) — it downloads the newest installer (one file, from releases.catheadai.com), takes the program out of it and reinstalls. Removing: double-click uninstall.command.

Install (Windows 10/11, x64) — beta

The Windows port ships the same engine, panel and effect. It has not yet been verified on a Windows machine — please report anything odd.

Easiest — one file, double-click (like the Mac installer):

1. Download colourMatik-windows-setup.exe (catheadai.com).
2. Double-click it. (If SmartScreen warns: More info ▸ Run anyway — the effect itself is CI-built from this repo.) The whole program is inside the Setup — nothing is downloaded from GitHub. It installs Python 3.11 / ffmpeg (winget) if missing, the engine and its Python packages, the Premiere and After Effects panels, the native effect, and engine autostart. Approve the one admin prompt (Premiere's shared plug-ins folder).
3. Restart Premiere Pro → Window ▸ UXP Plugins ▸ colourMatik.

(Manual alternative: Code ▸ Download ZIP → run windows\install-windows.cmd.)

Updating: the panel updates itself in one click (it checks at most once a day); by hand: windows\update-windows.cmd — it downloads the newest Setup (one file, from releases.catheadai.com) and installs the program inside it; every step logs to %APPDATA%\colourMatik\update.log. · Removing: windows\uninstall-windows.cmd · Engine console (debug): windows\colourmatik-app.cmd

Building the installers: Windows — windows\setup\build-setup.ps1 (NSIS 3; packs the committed tree into colourMatik-windows-setup.exe). macOS — ./mac/app/build-app.sh sign on the Mac (packs it into the notarized installer app as payload.zip).

Publishing: downloads and updates come from our Cloudflare R2 bucket, served at https://releases.catheadai.com/colourmatik/: the installers under fixed names (colourMatik-windows-setup.exe, colourMatik-mac.zip), then — last — latest.json ({version, mac: {url, size, sha256, version}, windows: {…}}), which the website and the engines' once-a-day update check read. How to upload: tools/r2-upload/README.md in the website repo. The GitHub releases (windows-latest / win-vX.Y.Z, darwin-latest / mac-vX.Y.Z) are only a backup that lets installs older than 1.8.3 — which still look there — find their way to an R2 version.

Building the Windows effect yourself: the .aex is compiled by the windows-effect GitHub Action — run it manually and paste a download URL for Adobe's Windows After Effects SDK zip (Adobe's license doesn't allow us to bundle the SDK). The action reuses the SDK's own sample project, so Adobe's official PiPL build steps apply unmodified.

Use it (2 clicks)

1. Open Window ▸ UXP Plugins ▸ colourMatik.
2. Select the reference clip → Use selected clip; select the target clip → Use selected clip.
3. Pick Accurate or Cinematic AI, then Match & Apply. The colourMatik effect is added automatically. Drag Intensity to taste (live).

There's also a headless CLI: ./colourmatik-cli target.mp4 reference.mp4 -o match.cube.

---

How it works

• Engine (colourmatik/) — a local FastAPI server that does the colour maths + AI and bakes a 33³/65³ .cube LUT. Runs on http://127.0.0.1:8765; the .cube also works in DaVinci Resolve / FCP.
• Panel (colourmatik-uxp/) — the Premiere UXP panel; reads the selected clips, calls the engine, and adds/configures the native effect.
• Native effect (colourmatik-fx/) — a real After Effects–SDK effect that applies the LUT with a built-in Intensity slider (C++ source + a pre-built Apple-Silicon build).

Run the tests with PYTHONPATH=. ./.venv/bin/python tests/run_tests.py.

Credits & third-party

• CanonCGT — Reference-Based Color Grading via Canonical Pivot Representation, CVPR 2026 (repo, Apache-2.0) — fetched by setup.sh.
• SegFormer (NVIDIA, ADE20K) via 🤗 Transformers — scene segmentation.
• Classical transport after Reinhard (2001) and Pitié & Kokaram (Monge–Kantorovich / IDT).

Personal tool by Sevki Bugra Ozbek — catheadai.com.