Public beta · Second Life viewer for macOS
Built for the shot.
Luminous is Needful's Second Life viewer for Mac, built for photographers. Frame your scene, choose and tweak the many settings and effects, and render your photo.
Bloom
With / Without
Slide to see what the snapshot adds.
Most effects can run live while you pose, or wait for the render. Either way, the finished photo gets them at full quality.
Sun shafts
Rays of sunlight stream through leaves, windows and gaps. Second Life draws none.
Projector beams
Second Life's projector lights only light what they hit. Here you also see the beam in the air: its colour, its projected texture and, for shadow-casting projectors, the shadows of whatever stands in it. It looks like stage light in haze, brightest at the lamp.
Volumetric light
Sunlight hangs in the air only where the sun actually reaches. Shade stays clear, so light through trees or a window turns into real three-dimensional beams instead of a flat fog.
Bloom
A soft glow round anything bright, such as the sun, lamps or glints on water, as a real lens gives. Second Life's glow only works on objects set to glow.
Anamorphic flares
The long horizontal streaks of a cinema lens, from only the brightest lights: the sun, its glints on water, lamps at night. Blue like the classic lenses, or any colour you pick.
Lens flare
Ghosts, a halo and a starburst made from the real light in your picture, not stickers pasted on top. The star has as many points as your aperture has blades, and Variation gives you a different lens each time.
Chromatic aberration
The colour fringing of a real lens: red and blue edges that grow toward the corners and show most on bright contrasts.
Halation
The warm red-orange glow film gives very bright edges, such as a figure against a sunset or a lit window at night.
Enhanced depth of field
Out-of-focus lights open into real bokeh: round discs, or shaped by the aperture blades you choose. The blur is worked out from the light itself, so highlights stay bright instead of turning into grey smudges. The background never bleeds over a sharp subject, and hair stays clean against a bright sky.
Colour, tone and effects
Grade the light itself before it becomes a picture, so bright skies keep their colour instead of burning to white. Choose a film curve, warm or cool each tone, or load your own colour table from Lightroom or Photoshop. Then add the effects that make it yours.
Soft shadows
Shadows behave like real sunlight: crisp where they begin, softer the further they fall. Second Life's are equally hard everywhere. You choose how hazy the day is.
Contact shadows
Fine shadows where things touch, such as feet on the floor, a hand on a hip or fabric on skin. They are too small for Second Life's shadows to catch. Contact shadows work for the sun, the moon and projector lights.
Enhanced ambient occlusion
Soft darkening in folds, corners and where things meet, worked out from the real shape of the scene. In a studio lit only by projectors it can darken their light too, where Second Life's ambient occlusion shows nothing.
Enhanced reflections
Shiny floors and still water reflect what is really around them, your avatar's feet included. Edges are clean where things meet the surface, with none of the pale outlines, gaps or bands at the horizon that the standard reflections leave.
Clarity
Brings out texture and shape in fabric, skin and stone by adding contrast to the details rather than to the whole picture, like the Clarity slider in a photo editor. Turn it down for a softer, dreamier look.
Vignette
Gently darkens the corners to draw the eye to your subject. It works on the light rather than the finished colours, so bright areas darken naturally instead of turning grey.
Film grain
The fine grain of real film. You set how strong it is and how large the grains are, from barely there to coarse and gritty.
Alpha sorting
Fixes a classic Second Life problem. See-through hair or leaves in front of other see-through things turn into a pale sheet, or make what is behind them vanish. In the render every layer is sorted pixel by pixel, so hair lies over trees, glass and other hair as it should.
Lens distortion
The bend of a real lens, either way: straight lines bow outwards towards the edges, as through a wide-angle lens, or inwards, as through a long telephoto. Second Life's camera keeps every line ruler-straight.
How it works
From live view to finished photo.
Frame your scene, then shape the photo in one panel – a tab for each part of the job – and press Render image.
Scene
Set the sky and the sun, then build the light: volumetric light, projector beams, sun shafts, soft and contact shadows, ambient occlusion, enhanced reflections and alpha sorting.
Tone
Pick a tone mapper and set exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. Clarity and sharpening bring out the detail.
Colour
Colour and white balance, split toning with warmth and tint for shadows, midtones and highlights, colour ranges, black and white, and colour tables – ready-made or your own.
Effects
Depth of field set like a real lens – f-number, aperture blades, focus that can follow the mouse – and the look of one: vignette, bloom, object glow, chromatic aberration, halation, anamorphic flares, lens flare and lens distortion, plus film grain.
Render
Choose the image size and the render quality – frames averaged for clean edges, depth of field through the lens, soft shadows across the sun – and where the file is saved.
Save / Load
Start from one of 20 ready-made styles, from Autumn rays to Warm glow. Save your own looks as presets, and the camera positions you want to come back to.
Settings
Keep the live view smooth while you pose: lower the preview resolution and let the heaviest effects run at low quality live. The render still uses the full quality you set here.
Live, render only or off.
Each effect has a button that decides when you see it.
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Off
The effect is switched off – while you work and in the photo.
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Live
You see the effect while you set up the shot, and it is in the photo too.
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Render only
The effect is added when you render, so the view stays smooth while you work. If Second Life has its own version of the effect, you see that in the meantime.
Live is a preview. To keep the frame rate up, some effects are drawn with less detail while you work. The render always uses full quality and layers several frames into one picture, so the photo often looks a little better than what you saw live.