Lumen Tool

Portrait Lighting Simulator

What Lumen Tool is for

Updated October 21, 2026

Lumen Tool is a browser-based lighting workspace for photographers, videographers and artists. Use it to explore light direction, shadow shape, color temperature and contrast, to study form and values, to read the light in a portrait and to save setups for later. There is nothing to install; see the system requirements for what your computer needs.

The studios

One subscription unlocks every studio. New studios and heads are included as they are added, never sold separately.

A good way to start

Start from a lighting preset instead of building every light from scratch, then change one light control at a time. Use Reference Lab when you want a starting setup from a portrait you like. Save anything you want to keep to The Archive.

Photo Lighting and Artist Lighting open with two lights and the basic controls. Switch on Advanced Mode for the other two lights, gels, the analysis and the print tools.

How to read the results

Lumen Tool is a visual planning and study tool. It does not replace a camera test, a real studio, a light meter or your own judgment.

In Photo Lighting and Artist Lighting, distance, height and brightness are the simulator’s own relative values, not centimeters, watts or flash power, and the analysis describes the virtual setup rather than a real exposure. Set Builder works in meters, watts, watt-seconds and real camera settings, but its lights are generic models built on reference measurements, not one brand. Read every result as a strong starting point, not a measurement.