MIMIC
Make your footage look like the film you love.

WHAT IT DOES
------------
Here is your footage on one side of the window. Here is the
film you want it to look like on the other side. Press the
big button - MAKE MINE LOOK LIKE THAT - watch the result
play, and if you like it, SAVE MY LUT. That is the whole
workflow. No node graph, no color-science degree, no
subscription.

Mimic does not slap the reference film's own LUT onto your
footage. It samples frames across both clips, measures
your footage and the film the same way, and builds an
original LUT matched to your material: a standard
33x33x33 .cube file that works in Premiere Pro, DaVinci
Resolve, LightWave, and most other hosts. Four finish
sliders - Spirit, Strength, Warmth and Fade - let you
season the measured look before you save it, and a pair
of crush limiters guard the extremes before and after
them.

Everything is processed on your own computer. Your
footage never leaves your machine.

WHAT'S IMPROVED
---------------
Version 1.3.2:

- SPIRIT, A GUARD FOR COLOR ITSELF. A new first control
  in the finish row bends a color's chroma back as it
  nears the film's measured limits, so no single channel
  clips on its own and hues never rotate. Its character
  is Soft, Firm or Hard, and at its minimum it withdraws
  completely.

- POST BUMPER MEASURED FROM THE FILM. The Post stage's
  walls are now the film's own measured darkest and
  hottest values, worked by two sliders - Blacks and
  Clipping - each with its own guard character. Both
  start at their suggested positions (Blacks 10%,
  Clipping 85%, marked by teal home ticks), and
  double-clicking a slider returns it home.

- STRENGTH KEEPS ITS HUES PAST 100%. The dose now
  scales the look's displacement instead of its
  channels; in testing, the hue deviation measured
  0.0000 degrees at every dose.

- CLEANER GRADIENTS, A FIRMER FLOOR, TRUE RAILS.
  Tetrahedral LUT sampling with a reduced steepest
  slope smooths skies and fog; the baked LUT can never
  dip below the legal black floor; the waveform rails
  mark the film's measured stops; and the full panel
  fits on screen again, status line included.

Version 1.2.4:

- ANCHORED AT BOTH ENDS. The look now lands on the film's
  own darkest and brightest picture values. Your deepest
  shadow is placed on the film's deepest shadow and your
  brightest highlight on its brightest highlight, so
  near-black and near-white detail keeps its separation
  instead of piling onto one value - and a highlight can
  no longer be pushed past the brightest value the film
  itself contains.

- A MATCH THAT CHECKS ITS OWN WORK. After building a
  look, Mimic now measures what the result actually does
  to your footage and corrects the difference. Saturation
  above all is measured, never assumed - no more matches
  that come out far too colorful on one pair of clips and
  drained on another. Feed Mimic the same clip on both
  sides and the result is your footage, unchanged: the
  match has nothing to invent.

- SHORT CLIPS SAY SO. The memory readout now tells you
  when a clip is short enough that every frame of it is
  in memory, and after a make, a note appears when a side
  was measured from only a few frames - with the advice
  that a longer section (or the full range) measures
  more accurately.

Earlier in the 1.2 line:

- READS ONCE, RANGES FREELY (1.2.1). Each clip is read
  into memory once. The frame-range sliders then choose
  from the frames already in memory - moving a range
  never sends Mimic back to the file - and a MEMORY
  LIMIT you set (beside SAMPLING) plus a live readout
  show exactly what is being held. Custom sampling
  counts are honored all the way to 3000 frames, as far
  as your memory limit permits.

- ZEBRA ON THE MONITOR (1.2.1). Animated stripes mark
  the pixels that are blowing out and the pixels that
  are crushing, live, while you drag. Push a finish
  slider and watch the stripes grow; bring the Post
  limiter up and watch them clear. Classic red over the
  highlights and blue over the blacks, or one stripe
  color of your choice.

- SCOPES WITH A SCALE (1.2.1). The waveform parade
  carries a 0 / 50 / 100 scale and two amber markers at
  the same ceiling and floor the limiters protect.

- A SPLIT THAT LINES UP (1.2.2). In Split view, the
  wipe line sits on the picture itself in both the
  preview and the Monitor, at any window size - where
  the line is drawn is exactly where the two halves
  divide.

- MEASURES THE PICTURE, NOT THE BARS (1.2.3). If your
  material is letterboxed, the bars are left out of the
  measurement: the look is figured from the picture.
  A lone stray pixel - one hot sparkle or one dead
  spot - cannot set your black point or your white
  point either.

- SCOPES THAT STAY ON TOP (1.2.3). Float the scopes
  into their own see-through window and they stay
  visible above the Monitor while you work.

HOW TO RUN IT
-------------
1. Put your footage on the left and the film you want to
   match on the right. Drag and drop a file or a folder
   of frames onto either side, or use the Choose
   buttons. In the file picker you can Shift-click or
   Ctrl-click a run of stills and they become a sequence
   for that side. On the film side you can also
   right-click to paste a still from the clipboard, or
   paste a direct link to an image or video file.

2. If you want only one scene measured, drag the range
   strip under either picture to narrow the window -
   Mimic measures only what is inside the range.

3. Press MAKE MINE LOOK LIKE THAT.

4. Check the proof with the view buttons: Mine,
   Mine + The Look, or Split. Hover any pixel to read
   its Before and After RGB numbers.

5. Season the result with the Spirit, Strength, Warmth
   and Fade sliders if you like. The Pre limiter guards
   the measured look before the sliders; the Post
   bumper guards it after them.

6. Press SAVE MY LUT and use the .cube in your editor
   or compositor.

The first time Mimic opens it asks for your license key
(it arrives in your purchase email). Paste it in and
click ACTIVATE - that is a one-time check. One key
covers 2 machines. A small file called cert-mimic.ldc
lives next to the program afterwards: it IS your
activation, so leave it where it is.

Tips for the best match: representative footage measures
best - a few different shots beat one long take of a
single scene, and longer sections measure more
accurately than very short clips.

MATCHING HDR TO HDR
-------------------
Mimic happily matches scene-linear HDR sources (EXR
and Radiance HDR) on either side. One behavior worth
knowing: when BOTH sides are HDRI environment images,
the resulting look can come out washed out - blacks
lifted, contrast flattened - especially when the two
environments differ a lot in overall brightness (a
dusk landscape matched to a bright beach at noon, for
example).

This happens because an environment HDRI is a picture
of illumination, not of a subject. The match balances
the two environments' overall light, so the LUT ends
up carrying their brightness relationship as well as
the film's color and contrast character. Applied to a
render, that reads as a general lift.

What to do about it: nothing is broken, and the look
is still usable - just expect to finish it by hand.
Pull Strength back until the wash settles (half
strength is a good starting point), and let the Post
bumper's Blacks guard re-seat the shadows. For the
most predictable results, match from a rendered frame
or a photograph rather than a raw environment probe,
and use HDR environment plates as the film side when
you want their color character more than their
exposure.

Matching HDR footage of real subjects (rather than
360-degree environments) is not affected the same way.

SHORTCUTS
---------
Playback:
- Spacebar - play or pause the preview, from anywhere
  in the app. (While you are typing in a text box, the
  spacebar just types a space.)
- Left / Right arrow keys - step one frame back or
  forward; stepping pauses playback. Click a picture
  first to give it the keys - hovering a top panel
  focuses it too, unless a text box is active.

Finish sliders (Spirit, Strength, Warmth, Fade):
- Shift+Click a slider - snap it to exact zero, the
  pure measured look.
- Double-click a slider - jump it to the value you
  clicked, rounded to the nearest 5%.
- Alt+drag any slider - fine adjustment at a tenth of
  the pointer's speed. Works on the limiter sliders
  (Highlights, Shadows, Knee and both Amounts) too.

Pictures (top panels, preview, Monitor):
- Mouse wheel - zoom around the cursor, from 25% to
  800%.
- Drag - pan a zoomed picture.
- Double-click - fit the whole frame again. A small
  Fit pill also appears while you are zoomed - click
  it for the same thing.
- Hover - a card floats beside the pointer with that
  pixel's Before and After numbers. Move off the
  picture and the card stays pinned on the last pixel,
  so you can work the sliders against a fixed reading;
  move over the picture again for live readings.
- Click an empty top panel - open the file picker.

Range strips:
- Drag an edge - trim the measured range.
- Drag the middle - slide the whole window.
- Double-click - back to the full range.

Split view:
- Drag the wipe bar - it moves in the preview and the
  Monitor together.
- Double-click the bar - return it to the center.

Monitor (its own window, from the Monitor button):
- Z - cycle the zebra: Off, Hot, Crushed, Both. The
  Monitor needs the focus for this - click it first.
- Right-click - the zebra menu, with stripe colors:
  Classic (red over highlights, blue over blacks), or
  red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta or white.
- Ctrl+F9 - borderless fullscreen on the display the
  Monitor is sitting on. ESC brings the window back.

Scopes:
- The Scopes button cycles Off, Waveform, Histogram,
  Vectorscope. The scopes open on Waveform when Mimic
  starts.
- Right-click the scopes on the preview - Float the
  scopes into their own see-through window.
- In the floating window: drag anywhere to move it,
  drag its edges to resize it, and right-click for the
  scope mode, the fade (Full, 75%, 50%, 35%) and Dock
  to Preview. ESC, or closing the window, docks the
  scopes back instead of switching them off.

Layout:
- Drag the divider under the top panels - trade height
  between the panels and the preview. Double-click it
  to restore the standard layout. Your split, the
  Monitor and the floating scopes are all remembered
  between launches.
- The opening splash can be skipped with a click or
  any key.

Copyright (C) 2007-2026, Kelly Lee Myers, Declaration Pictures,
Liberty3D.com, Black Tiger Recordings LLC. All rights reserved.
FFmpeg is a separate, unmodified program that Mimic runs -
see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt and FFMPEG-LICENSE.txt.
Support: support@liberty3d.com
