Colour scripts and palette maps are serious tools for planning and analysing movies. But they’re also a neat way to turn your favourite films into decorative images.

Palette Mapper, tools developer Richard Rosenmann‘s free After Effects plugin, does just that, scanning each frame of a video clip to extract an average pixel colour, then displaying it as a vertical line.

Repeat the process for an entire movie, and the result is an image like the one above – the colour bars behind the logo are actually generated by a sequence from The Matrix.

An automated tool to turn movies into colour bars, with a range of input options
You can find tutorials for achieving similar effects in a range of software, but Palette Mapper automates the process, even time-compressing entire movies to fit into single images.

The plugin works in 8-bit or 16-bit mode (it can handle 32-bit footage, but converts it to 16-bit), can process colour or luminosity data, and generates images up to 30,000px wide, After Effects’ internal limit.

System requirements
Palette Mapper is compatible with After Effects CS6+ running on Windows 7/10 only. It’s a free download.

Download Palette Mapper for After Effects for free from Richard Rosenmann’s website

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