Depth Scanner 1.15.6 — Mac version

Version 1.15.6 keeps the controls tight and the results quick. The plugin scans a frame and works out which bits sit nearest the lens—no extra cameras, no lidar needed. You get a greyscale depth map that you can push straight into a depth-based transition or use as a matte. The controls feel like part of After Effects rather than something bolted on.

• Focal range slider to tighten or widen what counts as "near"
• Blur control for softening the depth edges so transitions don't look cut-out
• Invert depth toggle when you need the background to drive the effect
• Preview resolution drop-down to speed up work on long clips
• Works on a single photo or a full video layer

It is one of those tools that does not try to be clever—it just hands you a clean depth map and lets you decide what to do with it. Handy for rack-focus looks, fog overlays, or anything where foreground and background need to behave differently.

When it saves a shot

You are cutting a short promo for a local music festival. The footage is decent—handheld, natural light—but the background sits flat against the performers. You want a bit of separation, a subtle blur behind the singer so the audience read the face first. No time to rotoscope and no budget for a reshoot. Drop Depth Scanner onto the clip, let it chew through a few seconds of analysis, and a greyscale map lands in your comp. A quick Camera Lens Blur driven by the depth output, feather the edges a touch, and suddenly the shot has shape. The singer pops, the crowd softens back, and nobody on the client call knows it took ten minutes.

Expectations that trip up new users first

Most problems come down to expectations, not the plugin itself. A few things worth knowing before you pull your hair out.

Depth maps look blocky or patchy

The preview resolution drop-down is easy to miss. If you are working on a long clip and the map looks chunky, it is probably set to Half or Quarter to keep things snappy. Crank it to Full before you judge the result. Also, low-contrast footage—misty scenes, flat overcast light—gives the AI less to grab onto. Drop a quick Levels adjustment before Depth Scanner in the effects stack and you will get cleaner edges.

Flickering between frames

Video throws more wobble at depth estimation than a still photo. Tiny exposure shifts or grain can make the depth map chatter. The Blur control under Depth Smoothing is your friend—bump it up a few notches and the plugin averages out the jitter. If the flicker still bugs you, pre-compose the clip and apply a light temporal noise reduction first. Depth Scanner works on the pre-comp with no fuss.

Nothing happens on an adjustment layer

Easy one to fix. Depth Scanner needs pixel data—a solid footage layer, a photo, a pre-comp. Slap it on an adjustment layer and it sits there doing nothing. Drag it down to the clip itself and you are sorted.

Mac fans spin up hard

Older machines will sweat a bit during analysis. Shut off other RAM-hungry apps, set the preview to Quarter while you dial in the focal range, then switch to Full only for the final render pass. Works a treat on Intel Macs running the depth scanner mac build without choking.

Drifting focus across a busy market scene

Maya has thirty seconds of market-stall footage—busy foreground, cluttered background. She wants a shallow-focus look that drifts from the fruit crates to the baker's stall behind. Here is how it plays out.

1. She drops the clip into a new comp and applies Depth Scanner from the Effects menu. The plugin starts analysing frame one straight away. While it works, she sets the preview to Quarter so the timeline stays responsive.
2. Once the initial map appears, she scrubs to a mid-shot. The greyscale looks about right—white on the apple crates up front, darker greys on the bread stall. She tweaks the Focal Range slider inward so only the nearest metre stays bright, then dials the Blur control to 4 px to soften the transition zone.
3. She adds a Camera Lens Blur effect beneath Depth Scanner in the stack, sets the blur map to Depth Scanner's output, and keys the focal distance across the timeline. Frame zero: apples sharp. Frame 300: bread sharp. The shift feels organic, like a real lens pull.
4. A spot check at Full resolution shows some ragged edges around a hanging basket. She nudges the Depth Smoothing blur up to 6 px and the basket sits cleanly in its zone.
5. Satisfied, she switches the preview back to Full and renders a test second. The MacBook Pro's fans kick in but the render cruises through. She exports the full pass and drops it into the edit timeline.

The whole thing, from plugin application to final render-check, runs under fifteen minutes. Half that time is just Maya playing with the focal pull to get the rhythm right. If you have been hunting for a depth scanner 2 after effects free download to test the workflow, the original Depth Scanner still holds its own for quick depth-of-field jobs without the complexity.

• Adobe After Effects