Depth Scanner 1.15.6 — macOS

Getting a usable depth map from a flat video clip or photo used to take a lot of manual rotoscoping or expensive hardware. Depth Scanner 1.15.6 solves that by running the frame through its AI model inside Adobe After Effects, outputting a grayscale depth map you can use immediately for depth-of-field effects, layered transitions, or any effect that needs distance data.

It works on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, and the standard After Effects plugin install is all you need. No extra servers, no cloud processing — the AI runs locally. The result is a 8-bit or 16-bit depth map that follows the moving content of your footage, which makes it useful for adding fake camera focus or building parallax animations from a single source.

Try Depth Scanner on handiest footage first

After you put the plugin in the right After Effects folder and restart the host, the natural thing is to try it on whatever footage is closest at hand. A few practical things help avoid confusion early on.

Start with a single still image, not a long video clip. The AI model on version 1.15.6 processes each frame individually, so a short test on one frame lets you see the depth map quality before committing to a render queue on a timeline. Pick a photo with clear foreground, midground and background elements — a person standing in front of a building, or a car on a road with trees behind it. That gives you the quickest read on whether the depth separation matches what your eye sees.

Keep the first test project simple. One layer, one instance of the plugin. Apply the effect, let it generate the map, then inspect the result in the Composition panel. If the grayscale looks sensible — bright white on the nearest objects, dark on the far ones — you are good. If the map seems flat or noisy, check that your footage has reasonable contrast and light. Very dark or uniformly colored scenes can confuse the AI, same as they would a human operator.

Make a habit of saving the depth map as a separate file after generation. You can export it as a grayscale PNG or TIFF from After Effects. That way you can reuse the map later without running the plugin again, which saves time when you are iterating on the same shot.

Set output bit depth before starting a real project

Depth Scanner 1.15.6 does not have many dials to turn, which is part of its appeal. But there are a couple of choices worth setting before you start a real project.

The output bit depth matters. 8-bit depth maps are smaller and render faster, but they show visible banding on smooth gradients like sky or out-of-focus backgrounds. 16-bit gives you smoother transitions, which matters if you plan to use the depth map as a displacement input or a mask for a blur effect. For final work on anything that will be seen on a large screen, stick with 16-bit.

If the plugin offers a preference for which GPU or CPU to use, check that it matches what your machine has. On Apple Silicon Macs, the AI model tends to run faster on the built-in GPU. On Intel Macs, you might get better results from the CPU option, depending on your graphics card. The documentation for version 1.15.6 should be clear about this.

The depth map generation is per-frame, and an incorrect project setting can cause unexpected results when the plugin tries to read the timeline.

Blur the background on a walking subject in a park

Imagine you have a 30-second clip of someone walking through a park. The camera follows them, and the background changes from a row of trees to an open field. You want a shallow depth of field on the person, blurring the background, but you did not shoot it with a fast lens. Here is how a session might go.

You import the clip into After Effects, drop it on the timeline, and create a new composition from it. Then you duplicate the clip layer twice — one for the blurred output, one for the depth map itself. On the first duplicate, you apply the Depth Scanner plugin from the Effects panel. The AI starts processing the first frame, and within a few seconds you see the grayscale map appear. The person is bright white, the trees are a medium gray, the sky is almost black.

You check the result on a few frames by scrubbing the timeline. The person stays well separated from the background throughout the clip. There is some flicker on the tree branches when the wind moves them — that is normal for any frame-by-frame depth estimation. You decide the 16-bit output will give you a smoother result, so you set that in the plugin options and let it re-process the first frame.

Now you apply a Camera Blur effect to the second duplicate layer, using the depth map as the blur mask. You set the blur amount to a moderate value and test a few seconds of playback. The person stays sharp, the background blurs, and the transition between them follows the depth map closely. The sky is the blurriest, which looks natural.

For the last ten seconds of the clip, the person moves into a patch of direct sunlight and the exposure changes noticeably. The depth map shifts slightly because the AI interprets the bright area differently. You add a Levels adjustment on the depth map layer to compress the bright end, and the effect becomes stable again. This kind of manual tweak is common in real work — the plugin gives you a strong starting point, but a final grade usually needs a little human judgment.

You export the depth map as a 16-bit PNG sequence for the entire clip, and keep it in the project folder. If you need to redo the blur later, you can apply it without waiting for the AI to run again.

Depth Scanner versus Blace's own V2 and other tools

Depth Scanner is not the only depth-map tool for After Effects, but the alternatives take different approaches. Here is how it stacks up against two others.

Depth Scanner 2 is from the same developer, Blace Plugins. The version 1.15.6 we are looking at here is the original Depth Scanner. Depth Scanner 2 adds features like multi-frame processing and better temporal consistency, which reduces the flicker you see on moving branches or fast cuts. If you find yourself working on long sequences with complex motion, Depth Scanner 2 might be worth a look. But for short clips and still images, version 1.15.6 does the job without the extra complexity.

Zaxwerks DepthCue works differently — it does not use AI. Instead, you paint depth values manually onto a layer or use a 3D model to generate the map. That gives you total control over the result, but it also takes more time and skill. For a quick depth map from a flat video, Depth Scanner is much faster. For precise work where the AI might make mistakes (like separating a character from a very similar colored background), DepthCue is more reliable because you are doing the separation yourself.

Depth Scanner free download mac offers a quick way to generate realistic depth maps from single photos. Depth Scanner 1.15.6 is actively maintained and runs on current versions of After Effects on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. That alone makes it a more practical choice than something you find on a forum from 2019.

• macOS (compatible with Intel and Apple Silicon)
• Adobe After Effects
• Interface language: English