Photo Studio¶

Photo Studio is Slipstream's photo and look studio (it used to be called the Lightbox). It lets you colour-grade the world like a photo editor, add camera and film effects, change the sky for yourself, set up the camera and measure the picture with scopes, all while you watch the result live.

Open it with Me → Photo Studio…, the F1 key, or the Photo Studio toolbar button.

Everything you change in Photo Studio only affects what you see (and your snapshots). Nobody else sees your grading or sky.

Panels¶

Photo Studio shows one, two or four panels (the Panels list in the top bar; four to start with). Each panel has a dropdown at its top that picks what it shows:

Section	What is in it
Look (everything)	Exposure & Tone, Color Grading, 3D LUT and Tone Curve.
Look: Exposure & Tone	Just exposure and the tone mapper.
Look: Color Grading	Just the grading: white balance, Lift / Gamma / Gain, split toning, LUT, tone curve.
Lens (everything)	Every camera and film effect.
Lens: Depth of Field	Depth of field and bokeh.
Lens: Bloom, Flare & Dirt	Bloom (or legacy Glow), Cross Filter, Lens Flare, Lens Dirt.
Lens: Film & Optics	Lens aberrations, Chromatic Aberration, Distortion, Vignette, Film Grain, Sharpen.
Scene	Render quality.
Sky	Day cycle and sky effects.
Cam	How the camera moves.
Scopes	Histogram, waveform, parade and vectorscope of the picture.

Two panels may show the same section; they stay in step as you change things.
Each panel scrolls on its own. Make the window bigger to give the panels more room; each panel has a minimum width, so the window will not get narrower than that.
Photo Studio remembers the number of panels and what each one shows.
Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+4 jump to a panel's dropdown.
The ↗ button at the top right of a panel puts it in a window of its own, so you can move it anywhere (another monitor, say). Closing that window, or its ↙ button, puts the panel back.

The top bar¶

Control	What it does
Looks (the list)	A Look is a saved bundle of your Look and Lens settings. Pick one to apply it. A `*` after the name means you've changed something since.
Save, Save As, Delete	Overwrite the current Look, save a new one, or delete one.
Revert	Throw away your changes and go back to the last Look you applied.
Undo, Redo	Step back and forward through your changes (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y). One drag of a slider is one step.
History	Every change since you opened Photo Studio, by name. Double-click one to jump back (or forward) to it.
Find	Type part of a setting's or section's name and press Enter (Ctrl+F gets you there). The panel you were last working in (or the first one) switches to the section that has it and the setting lights up. Press Enter again for the next match.
Panels	One, two or four panels.

Every slider has a small reset button at its right that puts that one setting back to its default; Reset All at the bottom of a section resets the whole section. Both can be undone.

Look: exposure and colour¶

Exposure & Tone: brightness (Exposure), Automatic exposure (HDR), and the tone mapper that fits bright scenes to your screen (Khronos Neutral, ACES, ACES Boosted, Reinhard, Filmic, AgX and more), with white point and contrast controls.
Color Grading: Enable color grading switches all of it on or off. Then Temperature and Tint (white balance; Pick neutral… sets them from something in the world that should look white or grey), Saturation, Vibrance, Contrast, colour wheels for Lift / Gamma / Gain (shadows, midtones, highlights), split toning and a tone curve.
3D LUT: apply a colour look-up table, the film-style "look" files used by photo and video editors. Open Folder opens your LUT folder; drop .cube or image LUTs there and they appear in the list the next time a panel shows the LUT section.

Compare before and after: Grab freezes the current picture, then Wipe or Side by side shows it next to the live view while you keep adjusting. You can also untick a grading section's Apply this section box for a moment to compare; that isn't saved, and every section comes back when you close Photo Studio. While any are off, the window title says how many.

Lens: camera and film effects¶

Depth of Field (with realistic bokeh, shaped apertures and an anamorphic look), lens aberrations, Bloom (HDR), Cross Filter (star-shaped highlights), the older Glow (Legacy), Lens Flare, Lens Dirt, Chromatic Aberration, Distortion (barrel / pincushion), Vignette, Film Grain and Sharpen.

For depth of field, Lock focus point keeps the focus where it is, and Focus follows pointer focuses on whatever is under the mouse. Me → Depth of Field has quick focus options too.

Scene: render quality¶

Anti-aliasing, reflections, mirrors, shadows and ambient occlusion, Performance (including Texture compression), and preview aids. These are the same settings as in Preferences, arranged for photographers, plus a few only found here: shadow Filtering, Avatar shadows and God rays. See Graphics & performance.

Sky: your own sky¶

Day cycle: move the sun to Sunrise, Noon, Sunset, Midnight or anywhere in between, for you only. Freeze the sky holds the sky and water at that moment; unticking it puts back whatever sky you had before. Use shared environment drops your own sky and goes back to the parcel's or region's. Pause clouds stops the clouds moving.
Sky Effects: Aurora, Meteors and the number of stars, drawn only on your screen.

Cam: how the camera moves¶

View angle, zoom time, camera lag, offset and smoothing, mouselook options, when the camera resets (after a teleport, when your avatar moves), Clicking your avatar keeps the camera where it is, and 3D mouse (joystick) control. These settings are shared with Preferences and camera presets, and are not part of a Look.

Scopes: measure the picture¶

A histogram (RGB, luminance or one channel), a waveform, an RGB parade and a vectorscope of the frame you are grading, measured after grading and before the vignette and grain. Layout shows one, two or four scopes at once in the panel; right-click a scope to choose which one it is. The line under the scopes says how much of the picture is crushed to black or blown to white, or the colour under the mouse pointer. The Scopes toolbar button opens the same scopes in a window of their own.

Your settings, saved Looks and LUT folder carry over by themselves: the first time this version starts it copies the few settings that were renamed (the tone mapper choice and the scope options) to their new names, and Looks saved by the Lightbox still load. The toolbar button keeps its place.

Tips for photos¶

World → Freeze World (Ctrl+Shift+F) pauses avatars, objects, particles, water and clouds for you, so you can frame a moment. See Look and feel.
Me → Camera Recorder… records and plays back camera moves.
Snapshots match what you see, including grading and lens effects.