How to Use the Match Color Tool in iMovie on Mac

If you are looking for a solution to match colors between different clips in iMovie, then you have come to the right place. Developed by Apple, iMovie is one of the most popular video editing tools used by Mac owners. Thankfully, iMovie offers a match color tool that would meet your editing needs. In this post, I’m going to make you familiar with the iMovie color matching tool and would also discuss its best alternative. Without much ado, let’s learn how to work on the iMovie match color tool right here.

Part 1: How to Easily Match Color between Two Video Clips with iMovie?

You might already know that iMovie has an inbuilt tool to match coloring between different clips. Let’s consider that you are editing two or more clips in a single project. Since they can have distinctive saturation and color values, your audience could easily make out the difference.

Therefore, to provide a smoother transition and maintain consistency in our videos, we use the iMovie match color tool. Once you have launched the application on your Mac, you can match the color between clips using iMovie in the following way.

Step 1: Load the Clips on the Timeline

To start with, just launch the iMovie application on your Mac and import your clips to the application. You can drag and drop your videos to its interface to load them as well.

Once the videos are loaded on iMovie, you can drag and drop them to the working timeline/storyboard at the bottom and arrange them accordingly.

Step 2: Apply the iMovie Match Coloring Effect

Now, you can view the transition of the clips and just place the playhead at the designated spot. Afterward, go to the top-right corner (above the preview tab) and click on the Color Balance icon > Match Color.

This will simply split the screen of the preview tab into two options – source and target clip. The target clip will automatically be loaded as per the playhead’s positions previously.

Afterward, you can click on the source screen and place the playhead on the timeline from where you wish to obtain the color matching effect. You can place a video clip or even a picture as a source in the iMovie match color tab.

That’s it! Now you can just preview the iMovie color matching effects on both the screens and click on the check (done) button to implement the changes.

Pro Tip: Manually Adjust Colors in any Video

At times, even after implementing the iMovie color tool, you would not get the exact results. Therefore, you might wish to manually set color grading on your clips afterward. For this, just load the clip to the iMovie timeline and click on the color correction option (color palette icon) above the preview screen.

This will display dedicated features to manually adjust the saturation, brightness, color grading, temperature, contrast, etc. in your clips.

Part 2: Wondershare Filmora - The Best Alternative to iMovie Match Color Tool

As you can see, the iMovie color matching feature might not yield the desired results. In case you are looking for a more advanced video editing tool, then consider exploring Filmora. Developed by Wondershare, it is a user-friendly and professional editing tool with a dedicated color matching option.

• Filmora has an advanced color-matching tool to automatically scale color grading between different clips and pictures.
• You can also trim, crop, or scale a video and manually adjust features like its color, saturation, contrast, brightness, etc.
• On the Filmora interface, you can also discover hundreds of presents, effects, stickers, captions, and more.
• The application also has tons of advanced editing features like keyframing, green screen, audio editing, and so on.
• Using Filmora is extremely easy and you can also use it to import/export your videos to/from different formats.

To perform automatic color matching in your clips with the help of Wondershare Filmora, you can follow this basic drill.

Step 1: Load the Media Files of your Choice

Firstly, you can launch Wondershare Filmora on your Mac and load the files you wish to edit. You can go to the Import option from its Menu or drag-and-drop your videos/photos to its interface as well.

Step 2: Perform Color Matching on your Clips

After adding the media files, you can drag and drop them to the timeline at the bottom. Now, take the playhead and place it from where you wish to match the color in the video.

Now, you can just drag the playhead to select the clip where you want to match the color. Right-click and select the “Color Match” option from the context menu or go to the Color > Color Match icon from the timeline’s toolbar.

This will divide the preview screen into two sections. Firstly, click on the reference screen and select any clip or picture that would be kept as a source. On the Color tab, you can even slide the value for the Comparison View to get the desired results.

You can now view the color-matched results on the preview tab and click on the “Match” button to implement the effect.

Step 3: Export your video

That’s it! You can later preview the results and click on the Export icon from the top. This will open a new window, letting you export your videos to different formats and in a preferred resolution.

As you can see, it is pretty easy to match the color between clips with the help of iMovie. Sadly, the iMovie color matching algorithm is not the best option and might not give the needed results. Therefore, you can consider using Wondershare Filmora as an ideal iMovie match color alternative. Not only is the application easy to use, but it also offers a wide range of advanced editing tools to meet your requirements.