Updated: 30 June 2022

Since this post, 15.3.0 was released and introduced a bug that can hang even crash when using this app.

15.3.1 was just released today which seems to be more stable, but there is a huge performance regression instead, which (while it now works again) makes this application VERY slow to work on files. I can see no workaround and have reported it.

It’s been a really long time since my last post as I’ve been pretty busy with other things. Home again, home again… jiggity jig.

Last year (maybe?) I started publishing a series of ideas as apps I thought might be useful to Digis, then work picked up and I had to abandon blogging to pay the bills.

One app I had not finalised was Match Total Exposures – something I wanted to emulate from the Lightroom feature.

If you don’t know it, the idea is to bring up (or down) the exposure of a batch of images, to match the exposure of a “hero” image. This is useful for bursts/brackets/series of images (of similar content) shot in challenging conditions, and the exposure has varied a bit in the set.

Fig 1. Batch of images imported – with varied exposure

Fig 2. Select the primary and adjust to required exposure

Fig 3. Select the rest in the set and run the script

Fig 4. Image exposures are now even

This typically involves using a keen eye to move adjustment sliders, or (for the advanced user) Capture One has the excellent Normalise tool (though this still requires a manual interaction with each image). A bit time consuming for big batches, and something ripe for automation.

Anyway, the first app was a failure – largely due to underestimating the approach. The first app used the exposure evaluation tool (that little green/red bar that tells you if your shot is over/under) to gauge exposure.

The available parameters from the scripting interface were simply too primitive, and the exposure tool itself had some very odd compression when deciding over-exposure.

I recently revisited the idea and tried again using a new, much more complex methodology using multiple readouts in a matrix (sort of copying how matrix metering works) – and the second iteration is much improved in terms of results, so much so, I have decided to release the solution.

The app itself I have decided to release for free. If you like it and it works for you, please consider supporting Shootmachine.co by looking at my other apps for sale. All proceeds go into keeping the site running.

The app is available from the store here.

/Jim