Quick how-tos

Product keys & trial

Installers ask for a product key. Keys are emailed after checkout. Prefixes tell you what you own:

• LMAR-… — Lumari Canvas (full)
• LMOT-… — Lumari Motion (full)
• LSUI-… — Lumari Suite (full Canvas + Motion)
• LTRI-… — Suite trial (timed, 3 days from first activation)

A 3-day Suite trial is available from the homepage pricing section. The trial clock starts the first time you activate in the app (online once), on 1 PC only. One trial per customer.

Prices & what you get

Pay once. Own the apps. No subscription.

• Canvas — £34.99 — layers, PSD, scans, stickers & die-lines, collage, light path, pattern maker, print / postcard, flipbook GIF, Unreal maps, workflows, high-quality export.
• Motion — £24.99 — timeline editor for Shorts / Reels (cuts, titles, looks, social crops). Focused cut; more features coming.
• Suite — £49.99 — both apps, one key. Save £10 vs buying separately (£59.98).

Buy from the homepage pricing section, or go straight to downloads after checkout. After payment you land on /thanks while we email your key.

Cancel paper grain (scans)

Scanned watercolours and pencil often pick up paper fibre. Canvas can flatten that texture while keeping paint colour.

Best path — scan pair

1. Scan the art normally, then scan the same piece upside-down (same scanner settings).
2. Import both images into one document as layers (normal on top or as selected).
3. Go to Image > Cancel paper (scan pair).
4. Drag Before / After to compare, tweak Paper texture / Protect paint, then Apply (optionally to a new layer).

Single scan polish

1. Open your scan.
2. Image > Clean paper grain.
3. Use the before/after wipe, then Apply.

Good for a quick cleanup when you only have one scan.

Guided path

Print > Create print / postcard walks you through clean → size → export. Or run Batch cancel paper on paired folders.

Make sticker / die-line

1. Open a cut-out (transparent background). Use Remove background if needed.
2. Print > Make sticker / die-line.
3. Defaults match print shops: about 3 mm white border + pad at 300 DPI, magenta cut colour. Adjust sliders if needed.
4. Make sticker builds layers: Sticker border, Artwork, Die-line. Download PNG and/or SVG die-line for the cutter.

Tools you’ll use often

• Brush — size, hardness, opacity, flow, spacing, and smoothing. Feel (gesture stabiliser): Ink (snappy corners), Wash (soft pull), Pixel (grid snap) — stroke character, not just Spacing. Save named presets (including a Pixel 1 px brush). FG/BG colour pickers sit in the toolbar.
• Eraser — soft or hard removal on the active layer (or inside a layer mask).
• Pen (N) — draw editable path layers with anchors and handles; fill/stroke, then rasterize when you need pixels.
• Clone / Heal — Alt-click to set a source, then brush. Enable Sample aligned scan below when a scan pair is bound for cross-scan repairs.
• Smudge & Liquify — push pigment and reshape soft edges after a clean.
• Move / Transform — reposition layers; free transform with skew when you need to straighten a scan (Ctrl+T).
• Marquee / Lasso / Magic wand / Object select / Crop — select regions (Smart object select races edge, global, and saliency detectors), then crop or limit paint/filters to the selection.
• Gradient & Fill — quick backgrounds and mats before postcard export.
• Dodge / Burn & Weather — lighten, darken, or age surfaces with weather presets.
• Eyedropper — sample FG/BG. Press X to swap colours.

Collage maker

Arrange several photos into one layout — grids, spacing, shuffle, then export or open as layers.

1. Open a document (or create a new one sized for the collage).
2. Go to Image > Collage maker….
3. Add images, pick a layout, tweak gaps and shuffle until it looks right.
4. Export the collage, or open the cells as layers for further edit.

Light path

Paint window light, bulb glow, spot, soft fill, or off-screen light onto your image with a live preview and a stack of adjustments (each with its own feather).

1. Open an image and select the layer you want light above.
2. Go to Layer > Light path….
3. Pick a style (window, bulb, spot, soft, off-screen, or custom polygon).
4. Shape the light on the canvas; stack brightness / exposure / levels / curves as needed.
5. Apply to add masked adjustment layers.

Pattern maker

Stamp a brush, shape, or layer along a guide — including the outline of a layer you already drew (rectangle, brush stroke, path).

1. Draw a shape or stroke on a layer (e.g. a rectangle), or create a Pen path.
2. Go to Image > Pattern maker….
3. Mode: Stamp along guide.
4. Along → Selected layer outline, then pick that layer (or use Path / Rectangle / Active layer outline).
5. Choose the stamp, spacing, and scale; preview updates live.
6. Apply as new layer.

AI tools & free cloud

Open the AI menu in Lumari Canvas. Some tools run entirely on your PC; others use the cloud (internet required). You can start free, then plug in your own API keys for more power and no shared limits.

What each tool uses

• Generate image — text‑to‑image (content / artwork / stickers / logos). Cloud. Free with a Hugging Face token (default FLUX.1‑schnell), or your own OpenAI‑compatible image API. Places the result as a new layer or a new document.
• Remove background — AI cutout. Cloud. Default is Hugging Face BRIA RMBG; you can point it at your own background‑removal endpoint (self‑hosted, fal.ai, Replicate, Bria API). A local Classic remover is always available offline.
• Replace background — AI cutout composited onto a solid, gradient, or transparent background. Cloud (same engine as Remove).
• Object select — smart selection (edge + saliency detectors). On your PC, works offline.
• Photo restore — denoise, revive colour, gentle sharpen for old photos. On your PC by default; add an optional cloud neural enhance in AI settings.
• Upscale & enhance — smart multi‑step enlarge + polish. On your PC.
• Text command — type what you want (“remove the background”, “generate a corgi sticker”) and Lumari routes it to the right tool. Uses free Hugging Face, your own chat API, or offline keyword matching.

Free out of the box

Background removal, replace, and cloud text commands work on the free Hugging Face tier — just paste a free token from huggingface.co/settings/tokens into AI > AI settings. Image generation also runs on Hugging Face, but free image credits are limited, so heavy use is best with your own key (below). Photo restore, upscale, object select, and the classic background remover need no account and run offline.

Add your own API keys

Open AI > AI settings. Everything is optional — set only what you need. Keys are stored locally on your machine.

Hugging Face (free cloud)

Paste a free token to enable cloud background removal, image generation, and text commands. Give the token “Inference Providers” permission for image generation.

Text commands — your own chat API

Choose Custom API (OpenAI‑compatible) and enter a Base URL, API key, and model. Works with OpenAI, Groq, OpenRouter, Together, Ollama, LM Studio, and anything exposing /v1/chat/completions. Pick Local keywords only to stay fully offline.

Image generation — your own image API

Under Image generation, keep Hugging Face (uses your HF token) or switch to Custom API for any /v1/images/generations endpoint (OpenAI gpt‑image‑1 / dall‑e‑3, or compatible proxies). Set the base URL, key, and model.

Background removal — your own endpoint

Change the Hugging Face rembg model, or set a Custom URL for any service that accepts an image POST and returns a cutout (self‑hosted rembg, fal.ai, Replicate, or the Bria API).

Cloud enhance / restore (optional)

Leave blank to keep Restore & Enhance on your PC. Set a Hugging Face image‑to‑image model or a custom URL to add a Use cloud option in Photo restore.

Workspace layouts

Switch panel layouts and custom actions bars from Window > Workspace.

• Paint / Photo / Texture / Full studio — built-in presets that show the right panels and a matching actions bar.
• Save current layout… — store up to 3 named layouts (toolbar dock, actions bars, right-column panels, colour theme). Overwrite a slot anytime.
• Right-click a saved layout to delete it (styled confirm).
• Actions bars — up to three custom bars; dock left / right / bottom (left, centre, right slots). Add commands with +; right-click for icon colour; Shift+right-click to remove.

Safe-zone overlay (TikTok / Reels / Shorts / IG)

Non-destructive viewport guides that show where platform UI and captions cover your frame. Nothing is burned into pixels.

1. Open a vertical (or feed) document — New Document has TikTok / Shorts / Story presets.
2. View > Safe-zone overlay, or pick TikTok, IG Reels, YT Shorts, IG Story, or IG Feed.
3. Pink regions = UI / caption cutouts. Teal TITLE SAFE box = recommended area for key text and art.
4. Export as usual — the overlay never appears in PNG/GIF/print output.

Saved view camera points (1 / 2 / 3)

The camera icon row in the top bar has three slots — 1, 2, 3 — that store zoom and pan so you can jump back to the same framing (detail work, then the full canvas, etc.). Filled slots show the saved zoom %.

Save a view

1. Pan and zoom to the framing you want.
2. Shift+click slot 1, 2, or 3.
3. The button lights up and shows the zoom (e.g. 200%). Shift+click again overwrites that slot.

Recall a view

Click a filled slot (no Shift) to restore that zoom and pan.

Clear / remove a view

• Right-click the slot — clears it immediately.
• Or reset the canvas first (Ctrl+0 / Reset view), then Shift+click the filled slot — saving while at the fit/reset framing clears that slot.

Layers, masks & adjustments

• Layers panel — stack paint, scans, text, paths, and adjustments. Nest into groups; the selected layer is highlighted so you don’t paint on the wrong one.
• Adjustment layers — Levels, Curves, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue sit in the stack and stay editable. Add from Layer > Layer adjustments (side menu) or right-click a layer → New adjustment. Double-click to edit.
• Clipping masks — clip a layer (or adjustment) to the opaque shape of the layer below. Toggle from the layer menu or right-click.
• Layer masks — Paint/Erase on the mask to hide and reveal without deleting pixels.
• Layer styles — drop shadow, outer glow, and stroke. Tick an effect (or move a slider) to enable it; preview is live.
• Panel Adjustments — the right-hand Brightness / Contrast / etc. sliders bake into the active layer when you Apply (destructive). Prefer adjustment layers when you want to keep editing.
• Filters — Pixelate, Gaussian blur, Radial / zoom blur (movable focus), Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, Median, High Pass, and more, often with a Before / After wipe.
• Rulers, guides & snap — drag guides from rulers; snap to grid (including 1 px) for UI and pixel work.
• New Document presets — HD/4K, game textures (powers of two), Steam, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and more.
• PSD import / export — File > Import > Photoshop PSD, or choose PSD in File > Export.

Pixel art & pen paths

Pixel art mode

1. View > Pixel art mode — nearest-neighbour zoom, 1 px grid, hard brushes.
2. Pick the Pixel brush preset (Size 1) or set Size to 1 manually.
3. Paint — Size 1 lands on a single document pixel (true grid cells).

Pen / path layers

1. Select the Pen tool (N).
2. Click to place anchors; drag for handles. Enter or double-click to close.
3. Edit fill/stroke on the path layer; Rasterize path when you need to paint over it.

Textures, Unreal & PBR

Open the right-side Textures panel (or switch layout to Texture pipeline) when you need engine-ready maps.

• Setup — shared export name, PNG or TGA 32-bit, optional pad to power-of-2, zip as one download.
• Unreal export — one click for separate BaseColor (T_*_D), Normal (T_*_N), and packed Occlusion / Roughness / Metallic (T_*_ORM) files.
• PBR maps — six separate maps: BaseColor, Normal, Roughness, AO, Height, Metallic. Tune normal strength; leave metallic at 0 for brick/paint. DirectX green for Unreal.
• ORM pack — pack occlusion (R), roughness (G), and metallic (B) into one RGB texture when you already have channels.
• Layer exports — pick a naming set, choose scope, then Export set: This layer (one set-numbered file), All layers (01_Name.png… by layer name), or Each # (every layer as set prefix + incrementing numbers). Multi-layer runs download as a zip of separate PNGs.
• Generate — procedural tileable layers (brick, concrete, metal, grids…), then Check seams / Make seamless.
• Seamless paint mode — View > Seamless paint mode. Brush and eraser wrap across opposite edges while you paint so tiles stay seamless (status bar shows SEAMLESS). Ghost rings preview the wrap.
• 9-slice & sprite sheets — UI panels and Paper2D atlas exports.

Export Unreal material maps

Turn a painted or generated surface into the separate texture files Unreal expects for a material.

1. Create or open a power-of-two document (e.g. 1024×1024) with your albedo / colour on the canvas.
2. Optional: Textures > Generate for brick/concrete, or paint/scan your own base colour.
3. Open the Textures panel → Setup. Set Name (e.g. BrickWall), format PNG or TGA, and enable pad-to-power-of-2 if needed.
4. Expand Unreal export and click Export Unreal set.
5. Canvas writes three files you can drop into a UE Content folder:
   • T_BrickWall_D — BaseColor (albedo)
   • T_BrickWall_N — Normal (DirectX)
   • T_BrickWall_ORM — Occlusion / Roughness / Metallic packed RGB
6. In Unreal: import the three textures, create a Material, plug D → Base Color, N → Normal, and unpack ORM into Ambient Occlusion / Roughness / Metallic (or use a Material Function that does it).

Versions & branches

Think of Versions as a small family tree for organising trials — not just a flat undo list.

1. Open Versions in the menu bar.
2. Save checkpoint on the active branch before a risky edit.
3. New branch forks a new path from the current document (e.g. “Warm trial”, “Crop alt”). You can keep several branches, each with its own checkpoints.
4. In the tree: click a checkpoint to restore that moment (and switch to its branch), or click a branch to jump to its latest checkpoint.
5. Optional: lock the file when you’re done so it can’t be edited by accident.

Flipbook & animated GIF

Turn visible paint layers into a stopmotion-style flipbook, then export a looping GIF.

1. Put each frame on its own layer (bottom → top = first → last). Keep them visible.
2. Open Image > Flipbook (stopmotion)…, File > Export animated GIF…, or Textures → Sprites & Flipbook.
3. Preview with Prev / Play / Next, scrub, onion skin, FPS, loop, scale, and quality.
4. New frame adds a blank layer as the next cel. In-betweens procedurally fills frames between A → B. Export GIF encodes and downloads.

Export, import, postcard & print

Import

• File > Open image — new document from PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF, SVG, or PSD.
• File > Import — Image as layer, Images as layers… (multi-select; each file = one layer), Photoshop PSD, or Image or PSD (new doc). Dropping several images onto an open doc does the same.

Export image

• File > Export (Ctrl+E) — PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, GIF (static), TGA, and PSD (layered Photoshop). Format-aware options for quality, scale, colour mode, and DPI.
• Quick PNG: Ctrl+S. Print: Ctrl+Shift+P.
• Export for print writes DPI metadata and can soft-proof CMYK.
• Animated GIF — use Flipbook (above), not the static GIF option in Export.

Postcard & print

• Image > Make postcard / Make print — standard sizes at 300 DPI with optional mat and bleed.
• 4-up postcard sheet (A4) and Batch folder to postcard JPEGs for print runs.
• Print units — mm / cm / in under Preferences > Print units (default mm).
• Print > Make sticker / die-line — layered sticker + optional SVG cut path.
• Keep a native .lma project save (Ctrl+Shift+S) so layers and checkpoints stay editable.

Updates

See what shipped and grab installers from the public Updates page. In the app, use Help > Check for updates (or Preferences) to download the latest build when online.

Canvas keyboard shortcuts

Defaults below. Remap anything under Help > Keyboard shortcuts.

Motion basics

Lumari Motion is a multi-track timeline editor for Shorts, Reels, TikTok, YouTube, and more — a focused cut today (lighter than Canvas’s stills toolbox), with more features planned. Projects save as .lumotion files (media stays on disk as file paths).

1. Import video, audio, or stills (Ctrl+I or drag into the media pool / timeline).
2. Drag clips onto Video, Audio, or Titles tracks. Use Mute / Solo / Hide on each track head.
3. Pick a social Format from the top menu (YouTube, Shorts, TikTok, IG, square…).
4. Scrub with the playhead; press Space to play / pause. Toggle loop on the transport bar for project or In–Out range.
5. File > Save often. Preferences has UI size if you want the whole chrome larger or smaller.

Cuts, fades & audio

• Trim — drag clip edges. Move clips by dragging the body.
• Split at playhead — Ctrl+B or the Split button.
• Precise cut — double-click a clip (or empty lane) or Edit > Split at time….
• In / Out — I / O mark a range; C scissors that range.
• Fade in / out — drag the gold corners on a clip, or use Edit menu / inspector sliders. The audio waveform follows the fade.
• Transitions — open the Trans tab (or Transitions menu) and drop blocks on overlaps; drag the block edges / move it like Resolve.
• Split audio to track — right-click a video clip to send audio to an A track (video goes silent; wave stays on the audio clip).
• Undo / Redo — Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y.
• Text overlays — Edit > Add text overlay; edit font, size, colour, and position in the inspector.

Framing, looks & export

• Frame — pan, zoom, and free crop on the preview (Frame tab). Scroll to zoom the preview.
• Looks — CCTV, night vision, scope, scanlines, VHS, plus vignette / blur / grain style effects from the Effects inspector.
• FX automation — optional automation tracks for parameters with keys on a graph.
• Export — Ctrl+E (or File > Export) using the current format framing.
• Updates — Preferences or Help > Check for updates. Suite (1.0.26+) can install the latest Motion from the update server at setup time when online.

Motion keyboard shortcuts

Also listed under Help > Keyboard shortcuts in the app.

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