Lumen Tool vs Virtual Lighting Studio: is the subscription worth it?

A while ago I wrote a comparison between Lumen Tool and set.a.light 3D. This time I wanted to look at another browser-based lighting simulator that’s actually been around for quite a long time: Virtual Lighting Studio by Zvork.

Before I start: I’m not writing these comparisons to convince everyone that Lumen Tool is the better option. I don’t see it as a competition.

I just think it’s useful to know what alternatives are out there, especially when some of them are completely free.

And yes, Virtual Lighting Studio is free!

Which raises a fair question. If there’s already a free browser tool for experimenting with portrait lighting, why would you pay €9 a month for Lumen Tool?

Is it actually worth the money?

So I put them side by side to see what each one has to offer.

Two browser-based ways to explore portrait lighting

Both tools are basically trying to do the same thing. You have a face, a number of light sources, and you can play with their positions and settings to see how the lighting changes.

It’s a great way to learn about light without setting up real equipment or keeping someone in front of your camera for hours (who’ll want a coffee break at some point anyway).

Virtual Lighting Studio has been around since 2012, and what it offers for free is pretty impressive. You can work with up to six lights, change their positions, adjust their intensity and color with gels, and switch between a selection of models.

You can also flip between the portrait and a schematic view of your lighting arrangement.

What I like about Zvork’s approach is that it includes photographic exposure controls. Lights can run in automatic TTL-style mode, or you can work with flash guide numbers and manual camera settings such as aperture, shutter speed and ISO. For modifiers, you’ve got bare strobes, snoots, ring lights and softboxes.

That’s a lot of functionality for something that costs nothing.

Lumen Tool started from pretty much the same idea, but I took a slightly different route. I wanted something that felt modern, was easy to understand and let you experiment with light directly on a 3D head. You can rotate the head, move your lights around it and immediately see how the shadows and highlights change.

I also wanted to keep the controls as simple as possible, without dropping the more advanced options photographers and artists might need.

Both tools run in your browser, so there’s nothing to install. And both are perfectly capable of helping you understand how light behaves around a face.

Where Virtual Lighting Studio stands out

The most obvious one is the price. Free is free, and there’s not much I can argue against that, haha.

But there’s more. Virtual Lighting Studio has a useful set of photographic controls, especially if you want to experiment with flash exposure. Guide numbers, TTL-style settings and the different modifiers give it a more camera-oriented approach in some areas than the original Lumen Tool portrait simulator.

Both tools have capture slots for keeping and comparing different lighting setups. In Virtual Lighting Studio, you can switch between those slots and share your current settings through a link. Lumen Tool also lets you capture setups and compare them side by side, with the Archive available for saving your work, photos and notes for later.

The interface looks a bit dated by today’s standards, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It puts a lot of controls right in front of you, and once you know your way around, there’s plenty to experiment with.

If your main interest is playing with portrait lighting and understanding basic photographic exposure, Virtual Lighting Studio might already give you everything you need. And in that case, I don’t see any reason not to use it.

What Lumen Tool offers beyond the first experiment

The biggest difference is what happens after that first lighting experiment.

In Lumen Tool’s Photo Lighting studio, you can work with four independent lights, choose different 3D heads, adjust skin tones, use gels and explore classic lighting patterns like Rembrandt, Butterfly, Loop and Split. There’s also an analysis panel that explains what’s going on, including the relationship between your Key and Fill lights.

I’ve put a lot of attention into making it feel immediate. Open the studio, move a light, see the result, without having to think about the interface.

Visually, Lumen Tool also has a more modern look, although that’s a matter of taste.

Another difference is that Lumen Tool isn’t limited to photography. Studio 2, Artist Lighting, uses the same lighting system but approaches it from a drawing and painting angle.

You can study the face in grayscale, reduce it to three, five or seven tonal values, and focus on form and shadow without any camera settings in the way.

Then there’s Reference Lab, where you upload a portrait and get an estimated lighting setup based on the photo. And the Archive gives you a place to save your work, organize it, add photos and notes, and come back to your setups later.

Lumen Tool has also grown well beyond those original studios. There’s now a full 3D Set Builder (which recently got its own flash system, including TTL and HSS), Color Lab for experimenting with colored light on a full model, and Hand Reference for studying hand poses, perspective and lighting.

All seven studios are included in the same subscription. No separate module purchases, no more expensive plans to unlock extra features.

That’s where the €9 subscription becomes a different proposition. You’re not just paying for an alternative to Virtual Lighting Studio.

You’re paying for a larger set of tools that happens to include a portrait lighting simulator.

That said, more modules doesn’t automatically make Lumen Tool the better choice. If you only need one specific function, the other studios might be completely irrelevant to you.

Side by side

Here’s a practical overview. I’ve deliberately skipped the usual green checkmarks and red crosses, because most of these things aren’t right or wrong. They’re just different ways of approaching the same subject.

Wherever possible, I’ve compared the original Lumen Tool portrait simulator with Virtual Lighting Studio. Features like the Set Builder and Reference Lab are in there to show what the subscription offers beyond that, not to suggest Virtual Lighting Studio is missing things it was never designed to have.

Which one should you choose?

That depends entirely on what you want to use it for.

If you’re fairly new to portrait lighting, want to see what happens when you move a softbox around a face, or just enjoy playing with different lighting arrangements, I’d definitely recommend trying Virtual Lighting Studio first. It costs nothing, and there’s enough in there to keep you busy for quite a while.

If flash exposure controls are your main interest, it also does some things my original portrait simulator doesn’t currently offer in the same way.

On the other hand, if you regularly work with lighting references, want freely rotatable 3D heads, compare setups, study tonal values or use the other studios, Lumen Tool gives you a considerably broader workspace.

That’s what I’ve been trying to build: a collection of useful, accessible tools for photographers, videographers, illustrators and artists, rather than the most technically complicated lighting simulator out there.

And the original Lighting Simulator is only one part of Lumen Tool now. Studio 5 alone has turned into a pretty substantial project, and I’m still working on it.

New features and studios are included in the existing subscription, so the package keeps growing without members paying extra for each addition.

Of course, not everyone needs it. For some people the free Virtual Lighting Studio will be more than enough, for others the extra functionality in Lumen Tool easily justifies the subscription.

And there’s nothing wrong with using both!

My suggestion: try the free options first, where available. You can try the interactive Lumen Tool demo on my homepage, without paying anything. For Virtual Lighting Studio, please read the website note below. Then decide for yourself whether a full membership adds enough for the way you work.

That’s the whole point of these comparisons. I want people to know what they’re choosing, not convince them something is better just because I built it.

Happy Lighting!