About three days ago I released a fairly big update to the Archive.
The basics were already there, but I’ve spent quite a bit of time improving the design, making everything easier to use and adding a few new features.
One of those is something I’ve wanted to add for a while, and it could be especially useful for people who use Lumen Tool professionally or for teaching.
But first, for anyone new to Lumen Tool, let me explain what the Archive actually is.
What is the Archive?
Every studio in Lumen Tool, whether that’s the original Lighting Simulator, Hand Reference, Color Lab or the newer Set Builder, lets you save your work to the Archive.
Think of it as your own personal collection of setups and references you can come back to whenever you need them.
Say you’ve spent an hour on a lighting setup. You’ve positioned your lights, adjusted their intensity, picked a model or a particular head, and tweaked until you’ve found something you really like.
Maybe you’re not quite done yet, or you already know you’ll want to use it again.
Instead of trying to remember every setting and rebuilding it from scratch, you just click Save to Archive.
Your setup is saved, including the relevant settings and configuration. Whether you come back the next day, a week later or several months down the line, you can open it and pick up where you left off.
That’s especially handy when you’re experimenting with different lighting situations or building up a collection of references for future projects.
Every member gets 250 MB of Archive storage, included in the regular subscription at no extra charge.
That gives you quite a lot of room to work with. If you do fill it up at some point, no problem, you can just remove older items to make space.
And if you don’t want to lose any of your older work, there’s another option. The Back up button lets you download your entire collection as a ZIP file. Save it on your computer, an external drive or wherever you keep your backups.
Once that’s done, you can clear out your online Archive and start filling it again.
There’s also a Restore button, so you can upload that ZIP again later.
Two things to keep in mind: you need enough free storage, and the ZIP has to stay unchanged. The restore function brings back the original saved data, it’s not built to import a ZIP you’ve edited by hand.
So basically, you keep your own backups and decide what you want available online at any given moment.
The Archive on Your Phone
Now for what’s probably the biggest improvement in this update.
As I’ve mentioned before, Lumen Tool’s member area isn’t designed for phones, and that’s a deliberate choice for two reasons.
First, many of the studios have fairly complex interfaces, with lots of controls, panels and settings.
Squeezing all of that onto a small screen would mean compromises I’m not willing to make. I’d rather have a proper desktop experience than spend ages building a mobile version that only does half the job.
Second, performance. Some studios, Studio 5 the Set Builder in particular, need a decent amount of graphics power. There’s a lot going on in those 3D environments, and expecting it all to run smoothly on a smartphone just isn’t realistic.
Your phone would probably file a complaint.
So I’m not planning to turn the whole member area into a mobile app.
But the Archive is a different story, and that’s where I saw a really useful opportunity.
Quite a few Lumen Tool users are teachers, photographers, artists or people with a separate workspace.
That got me thinking: how useful would it be to have your saved setups on your phone, even if you can’t work inside the studios there?
Imagine you’re at home preparing a shoot for the next day. You spend some time in the Set Builder arranging your model, placing your softboxes and playing with the lighting until you’re happy. You save it to your Archive, close your laptop and call it a day.
The next morning you’re in your studio and want to recreate that setup. Instead of dragging your laptop along or trying to remember where everything was, you take out your phone, log into Lumen Tool and open your saved setup.
The same goes for someone teaching a drawing or painting class. You can prepare a few lighting references at home, save them and have them right there on your phone while you teach.
Or maybe you’re in a different room, at a client’s location or somewhere else entirely. There are plenty of moments where a quick look at your saved work comes in handy.
So when you now log into the member area on a phone, the Archive takes center stage.
I’ve redesigned it to work properly on smaller screens, so you can comfortably browse your saved setups, view the images and read the information you’ve stored with them.
Technically, you could already open the Archive on a phone before this update, but I wouldn’t exactly have called it a pleasant experience. The interface just wasn’t built for it.
I’ve put quite a bit of time into fixing that, and I’m really happy with the result. It’s not meant to replace working on a desktop or laptop, just a convenient way to take your references with you.
Comparing Your Setup With the Final Result
I’ve also added a smaller feature that could be quite interesting, especially for photographers. You can now attach two additional photographs to a saved Archive item, so your planned setup and the real-world result live together.
Let’s say you’ve built a portrait setup in the Set Builder with a model and two softboxes.
You’ve played with positions, angles and light intensity, and saved the scene.
A few days later you recreate it in your actual studio. Now you can add a photo of your real lighting arrangement and another one of the final shot.
That gives you the simulated setup, a photo of how you recreated it and the final image, all in one Archive item. It’s a nice way to compare the simulation with reality, see what worked and maybe learn something from the differences.
And no more digging through folders to find the photo that belongs to a particular setup.
You can also add personal notes to your Archive items. That was already possible before, but combined with the extra photos, it makes the Archive a much more practical place to keep track of your experiments and ideas.
And What’s Next?
So that’s the latest Archive update. What started as a design tweak turned into something quite a bit bigger: a much better interface, proper mobile support and comparison photos for your saved work.
I’m particularly happy with the mobile part, because it gives the Archive a purpose beyond just storing things for later.
Prepare it at home and take it with you, no computer needed.
Now I’m moving on to the next thing on my ever-growing list. What exactly that’ll be, I’m not entirely sure yet, haha. But there’s definitely no shortage of ideas.
Happy Lighting!
Franck