Accurate Color Matching and Color Grading Made Easy
Review by Fernando Santos
Master Match is brand-new software for the demanding photographer or videographer who’s looking to have accurate colors, or wants to have total color flexibility, by using creative color lookup tables (LUTs). Developed by German software company, Picture Instruments, Master Match allows you to match colors between different cameras, or apply the look of popular camera models, both to your still images or movies. Picture Instruments has many products in the color-grading area, and they have interesting technology that you don’t often see in other products, so this new product immediately caught our attention.
If you use multiple cameras—DSLRs, mirrorless, mobile phones, and drones—it’s normal that the colors differ from camera to camera. Master Match solves that problem in an effortless way. Basically, you load the two images you want to match, pick the matching technique of your choice, then adjust the parameters, and it creates a color lookup table (a.k.a. LUT). You can use that LUT file in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Capture One (and many popular video editors, too), and then load a preview image to see the LUT effect on your image. The latest Master Match release lets you grab your images from an open Photoshop file, instead of having to load them from a disk, which allows for a faster workflow.
As well as matching colors between images from your cameras, you can also color grade your images based on the looks of cameras you don’t have, because Master Match includes many reference files from popular cameras and color charts.
Master Match works as a standalone application and has a list price of $289 for a perpetual license that you can install on two computers that you own. It’s available for both Windows and macOS.
