Luminous: my Second Life viewer for Mac photographers

For a while now I have been working on something a bit different from my usual poses and gadgets: a Second Life viewer of my own. It is called Luminous, and today it is out as a public beta.

I take a lot of pictures in Second Life, and on the Mac I often wished for the photo tools that Windows viewers have. Windows photographers already have several excellent viewers to choose from, but on the Mac the choice has been small. So I decided to build the viewer I wanted myself.

The idea is simple. You frame your scene in a quick live view, play with the light, the lens and the colours, and press Render. Luminous then draws everything at full quality, from sun shafts and soft bokeh to film looks and portrait styles with skies of their own. The finished photo often looks better than what you saw while you worked, and that moment never gets old for me.

It is still a beta, so you will meet a bug or two. If you do, please tell me through the Luminous site. That is the fastest way to get it fixed. And if you give it a try, I would really love to see what you make with it.

You can read more and download Luminous here