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.

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.

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, for example Colored Shadows or Two-Tone Split. Undo brings back your previous setup if you change your mind. Next: placing lights.