I’m incredibly happy, and also a little surprised by how quickly all of this is happening.

By now, I regularly get a new Stripe sign-up email, and every single time I still think: wow. I know I’ve built something I believe in. I put an enormous amount of time, energy and attention into it, and I think it’s worth paying for. But that obviously doesn’t mean other people automatically have to feel the same way.

That’s exactly why those first people signing up mean so much to me. People who can barely find any reviews yet, who don’t really know what this site will eventually become, and who still decide to pay for it.

So if any of you are reading this: thank you, thank you, thank you.

There really is nothing better than putting this much energy into something, enjoying the process, and then actually being rewarded for it too. If anything, it just gives me more energy to keep building.

And that is exactly what I’m doing.

Hand & Arm Reference Studio

I hope to launch the new Hand & Arm Reference Studio today, or tomorrow at the latest. It’s about 95% finished and I think it looks really good. And it’s simply part of the normal monthly subscription. There won’t be separate plans where you keep paying more to unlock another Studio.

As soon as it’s live, I’ll write a separate post explaining exactly what it does.

After that, the building continues.

The 3D Set Builder keeps growing

The 3D Set Builder, which I wrote about in more detail in my previous post, is still coming as well. This won’t be a project that suddenly becomes “finished” one day. It’s so large that I’ll probably keep expanding it bit by bit over the coming year. Parts of it will already appear in the member area while development continues.

But all the new sign-ups have also got me brainstorming again about what could come after that. None of these are promises or deadlines. Some things might exist in two weeks, others may take three months or much longer. It mostly depends on how difficult they turn out to be.

Product Reflection Studio

One idea I’m really excited about is a Product Reflection Studio. A space where you could place bottles, glass, jewellery, cans or glossy packaging and see in real time where reflections land as you move lights, softboxes, scrims and flags around. Reflections are a constant headache in product photography, and this feels like exactly the kind of problem a fast browser tool could help with.

Face & Expression Studio

Another one I’d love to build is a Face & Expression Studio. We already have the Lighting Simulator, but this could go much further towards a fully adjustable face. Eyebrows, mouth corners, eyes, jaw, expressions and, naturally, lighting.

And yes, for almost everything I come up with, some software package, app or tool already exists somewhere.

That doesn’t change much for me. The idea behind everything I build stays the same: it has to work quickly and properly, directly in your browser. No installations. No huge software packages. No app downloads. You open Lumen Tool and within ten seconds you should be able to start doing something. That’s never going to change, however big Lumen Tool gets.

More ideas for the future

I’m also thinking about an Anatomy Motion Studio, where you could move from skeleton to muscles to skin and see how anatomy changes as the body moves. Technically that would be a much heavier project, so it definitely won’t be finished anytime soon, but it’s very much on my list.

Lens and perspective tools interest me too, as does a Natural Light Studio where you could experiment with windows, direction and daylight.

A lot of existing tools in this space are getting quite old. Computers and browsers have become enormously more powerful over the last few years, which makes it possible to build things in the browser that simply weren’t practical before. So there’s still plenty left to build.

And as long as people keep using Lumen Tool and paying for it, I’ll keep building.

That feels like a pretty fantastic exchange to me.