Lights and colors

Color Lab works with up to six lights at a time. Choose Add light in the Lights panel and pick the type that fits what you want to see.

The four light types

A soft light gives broad, gentle light with soft shadow edges, like a softbox. A strip is a long, narrow soft light that works well for edges and rim light. A spot gives a round, sharper beam with crisp shadows. A projector shapes the light with a pattern: circle, bar, window or ring. The pattern falls on the model, the floor and the background, and shadows follow it.

Every light has a switch to turn it on or off, and Solo shows one light on its own so you can see exactly what it does. In the Advanced view, Light options renames a light or duplicates it.

Colors and the palette

Each light takes its color from the Palette, which has four colors: Base, Accent, Rim and Background. Lights that share a palette color change together, which keeps a color scheme consistent. Use Palette suggestions for a quick starting point, such as Rose & teal or Warm & cool.

To give one light its own color, open the Advanced view and set Color link to Independent color. You can type a HEX value or adjust red, green and blue directly. Palette details there does the same for the four palette colors. Swap Base / Rim trades those two colors and Hue +30° turns the whole palette around the color wheel. A Lock on a palette color keeps it as it is while suggestions, Swap and Hue change the others.

Brightness and beam

Brightness sets how strong a light is compared to the others. Soft lights and strips have a Light size: bigger means softer shadows. Spots and projectors have a Beam width: a narrow beam gives a small, bright pool of light. Projectors also have Pattern rotation and Pattern edge softness in the Advanced view.

Presets

The Lighting preset menu replaces the whole setup in one step: Default, Colored Shadows, Two-Tone Split, Rim + Accent or Background Wash. Undo brings back your previous setup if you change your mind. Next: placing lights.