One question I kept running into with Lumen Tool was surprisingly simple: who is this actually for?
The obvious answer is anyone who works with light. That still covers a pretty wide group. There are photographers and videographers using it, but also people who draw, sketch or paint.
In the very limited anonymous statistics I keep, I can also see that Lumen Tool is being used in educational environments, including traffic through Google Classroom. I really like seeing that, because it means people are finding uses for the tool that go beyond the way I originally built it.
It did create a small problem though.
Now that Lumen Tool is paid, I occasionally have to do the thing I probably enjoy least: talk about what it is for and where the different studios fit.
And while looking at the original Lighting Simulator, I realised I was trying to serve different types of users inside the same interface.
Studio 1 and Studio 2
So I split it.
The original Lighting Simulator now has two focused versions inside Lumen Tool: Studio 1: Photo Studio and Studio 2: Artist Studio.
The main lighting experience remains very similar. The difference is in the extra tools around it.
- Studio 1: Photo Studio is aimed at photographers and videographers. It now has Photo Tools including Solo Light, Match Kelvin to Key, Key:Fill Assist and focal length views from 24mm up to 135mm.
- Studio 2: Artist Studio has tools made more specifically for drawing and painting. There is a Value Study with grayscale and different value steps, Form & Shadow views, Drawing View with fixed angles and light guides. You can also upload a reference and apply the Value Study to that image.
This makes the interface a lot calmer.
A photographer no longer has to look past drawing tools they will probably never touch. Someone studying light for drawing does not need camera-specific controls taking up space either.
It is a relatively small change from a technical point of view, but I think it makes Lumen Tool much easier to understand when you open it for the first time.
Both studios are live now.
And then there is Studio 5
At the same time, I have been working on something quite a bit bigger.
A few days ago I wrote about set.a.light 3D and compared it with Lumen Tool. set.a.light 3D is a fantastic piece of software and goes much further into complete virtual studio building than Lumen Tool currently does.
While writing that article, one idea kept sticking in my head.
That article got me thinking about what a browser-based 3D studio could look like inside Lumen Tool. So I started experimenting with that idea in Studio 5.
The idea is an actual 3D room that runs in real time. You can place a model inside it and move lights around the room. I also want proper studio equipment in there, including softboxes and other modifiers. Furniture and additional objects can become part of the scene as well.
Basically, I want you to be able to build a small studio setup and immediately see what the light is doing inside that space.
And yes, getting that to run properly in a browser is quite a lot of work.
I still want Lumen Tool to follow the same basic idea it has had from the beginning: open the website and start working. No installation and no huge software package sitting on your computer.
I am being careful with promises around Studio 5 because I am literally building it right now. Some ideas will work, others will probably change once I start pushing them further.
Studio 5 is not intended to recreate set.a.light 3D. The goal is to build a much lighter browser-first virtual studio around the way Lumen Tool already works.
What I think I can make is a smaller browser-based virtual studio that opens quickly and fits naturally inside Lumen Tool.
If everything keeps moving in the direction it is going now, Studio 5 will probably be the next new module.
I’ll share more once I know exactly what survived the building process.