Lumen Support
Stuck or curious? Email hello@papermint.studio and a human reads every message, usually within a day.
Getting started7
- Open a folder. Click Open Folder, press ⌘O, or drop a folder anywhere on the window. Photos appear in a grid, and the folder's subfolders appear in the sidebar tree.
- Home. Home shows the folder you were last in as a row of photos, starting at the one you stopped on, with Continue and Slideshow. Below it are your folders as small stacks. The search field at the top searches every folder.
- View a photo. Click any thumbnail. Use the arrow keys, a trackpad swipe or the scroll wheel to move between photos, and hold an arrow key to scrub fast. Press G to go back to the grid.
- Going back. Esc backs out of anything: from a photo to the grid, from a subfolder to its parent, and from there to home. ⇧⌘W goes straight home, and so does the house button at the top of the sidebar.
- Open a single photo. Pick an image in the open panel, drop it on the window, or use Open With → Lumen in Finder. If macOS only gave Lumen that one file, you see just that photo; open its folder to see the rest.
- Pick up where you left off. When you launch Lumen again, it reopens the folder you were in at the photo you were on.
- Press ? inside the app for the full list of keys and gestures. Almost everything has a key.
Search11
- How to search. Press ⌘F, or use the search field at the top of home or the sidebar, and type what you are looking for: the photo in your own words (“people on a beach”, “dinner with friends”, “red hat”), words visible inside it (a sign, a receipt, a race number), the nearest city, a month and year like “October 2024”, a camera or lens, or a file or folder name. Put words in quotes for an exact phrase.
- Smart search. Lumen understands what is in your photos with an on-device model (EmbeddingGemma 2, by Google). It is a one-time 656 MB download: leave it ticked at the end of the welcome, click Download in the search bar, or open Settings › Smart Search (⌘,). It downloads in the background, can be paused, and carries on if you quit Lumen. It runs entirely on your Mac, works offline, and can be removed any time in Settings.
- Where it looks. Under the title, choose This Folder or All Folders. All Folders covers every folder in your library plus the one you have open. The People, Text in photo and Has location chips narrow the results.
- Find Similar. Right-click a photo in the grid and choose Find Similar to see the photos that look most like it, closest first.
- Why does it say Reading or Understanding? Lumen reads your photos in the background so they can be searched, starting with the folder you have open. Reading is quick, usually a minute or two for a thousand photos, and makes names, text in photos, places and dates searchable. With smart search, Understanding then looks at what each photo shows, about a quarter of a second a photo, and results grow as it goes. Photos in iCloud Drive that aren't on your Mac are downloaded first, which takes longer.
- It stays out of your way. Reading waits while you browse, and it pauses by itself when your Mac is running warm. Understanding also pauses in Low Power Mode. To pause it yourself, click the progress row at the bottom of the sidebar, and click it again to resume.
- Which photos get read. Only folders in your library and the one you have open, subfolders included. Build and code folders (like node_modules or build) and app bundles are skipped. New, changed and deleted photos are picked up automatically.
- Without smart search. Until the model is downloaded, or if you choose not to, the search bar says Basic search on this Mac, and Search uses the subjects it recognises, text in photos, places, dates and names. Every word you type has to match.
- How matching works. Smart search matches by meaning, so “dog on a couch” finds that photo even though nobody wrote those words down, closest matches first. Words visible in a photo, places, dates and names match literally: your words, their plurals and endings, and the start of the word you are still typing.
- See what Lumen read. Open the info panel (press I). Under In this photo you can see the subjects, text and nearest place Lumen found for that photo.
- Is anything uploaded? No. Reading and smart search happen on your Mac, with Apple's on-device frameworks and the on-device model, and the search index is stored on your Mac. Searches never leave it either. Place names come from a city list bundled with the app (from GeoNames, CC BY 4.0), so Search never looks up a location online.
Your folders6
- The folder tree. The sidebar lists your folders as a tree. Choosing a folder opens its branch down to where you are and folds the others away; the arrows open and close branches by hand. Folders you open with Open Folder stay in the tree.
- Where you are. Above the tree, the sidebar shows the folder's name and the path above it. Click a folder in the path to step back up.
- A folder of folders. When a folder holds only other folders, the grid shows every photo inside them, grouped under each folder's name.
- Remove a folder. Right-click it in the sidebar or on home and choose Remove from Folders. Lumen forgets the folder and its search data (if it is the folder you have open, the search data stays). Your photos are not touched.
- Include subfolders. To see every photo in a folder and all its subfolders in one grid, open Sort & settings and turn on Include subfolders.
- Live updates. Lumen watches the open folder, so photos you add, change or delete elsewhere show up right away.
Picks, rejects and stars5
- Mark as you look. In the viewer, press P to pick, X to reject, 1 to 5 for stars and 6 to 9 for a colour label (red, yellow, green, blue). Press the same key again to clear it, and U to undo. The bar under the photo does the same with a click. In the grid, the keys mark everything selected.
- Filter the grid. Once anything is marked, chips above the grid show All, Picked, Rejected, Not marked, three stars and up, and each colour. Rejected photos fade in the grid.
- Act on the result. The bar at the bottom of the grid offers Move to Trash for the rejects (Undo brings them back) and Copy to Folder… for the picks, which copies their marks too.
- Where marks are kept. Lumen saves them in a small .xmp file next to each photo (IMG_0001.xmp beside IMG_0001.CR2) and never writes into the photo. Stars, rejects and colour labels use Adobe's standard fields: Lightroom reads them for RAW files, and Capture One and Bridge read them for every format. XMP has no standard pick, so picks are kept in Lumen's own field. Marks already written by other apps show up in Lumen.
- Can't save a mark? A photo opened on its own from Finder gives Lumen no access to its folder. Open the folder with Open Folder and the marks are saved.
Compare3
- Open it. Select two or more photos in the grid and click Compare (or press Y). From a photo, Y compares it with the ones after it.
- Zoom together. Choose Fit, 2× or 4×, pinch, or double-click. Both sides zoom and move together, so you look at the same spot in each. Shutter speed, aperture and ISO sit on each side.
- Decide. ← and → choose a side, and P, X and the number keys mark it. Space keeps the side you are on and brings the next photo into the other. Esc closes Compare on the photo you chose.
Similar shots and copies4
- What it finds. Photos taken moments apart that look alike (a burst, a few tries at the same shot), and the same photo saved more than once, as an exact copy, a HEIC version or a smaller export.
- Where to see them. A small stack badge shows on those photos in the grid. Press S, or click Similar shots above the grid, to go through them one group at a time.
- Decide. Point at a photo and click Keep this: it is picked and the others in its group are rejected, in one step you can undo. Compare opens a group side by side. For copies, Keep 1, Move to Trash keeps the largest file and moves the rest to the Trash.
- Nothing happens on its own. Lumen never hides, deletes or chooses a photo for you. Groups appear as Lumen reads the folder for Search, so a freshly opened folder may take a moment. Photos without a capture date can only be matched as copies.
Lumen Pro6
- Free for 7 days. Click Try Pro free at the top of the home screen (or open any folder) and choose Start 7-day free trial. Every feature works during the trial, with as many folders as you like. Nothing is charged, and the trial never turns into a payment on its own.
- The trial belongs to your Apple Account. It runs for 7 days from the day you started it, on every Mac signed in with that account. Reinstalling Lumen does not restart it.
- After the trial. Lumen still opens, and a photo opened from Finder still shows. Opening a folder asks for Lumen Pro.
- One-time purchase. Lumen Pro is $9.99 once (shown in your local currency), no subscription, all future updates included. Buy it any time from the Pro button on the home screen, or Buy now in the trial sheet. Payment is handled by the App Store.
- New Mac or reinstalled? Click the Pro button on the home screen and choose Restore Purchase. Pro and the trial follow your Apple Account.
- Refunds. Purchases are handled by Apple, so refunds are too. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com.
Editing and converting8
- Your originals stay as they are. Adjusting, cropping, exporting and converting always write a new file. Lumen never overwrites the photo you edited.
- Adjust (A). Exposure, Contrast and Saturation sliders, plus Auto to balance them for you. Export Edited Copy saves a JPEG called “name edited.jpg” next to the original.
- Crop & Straighten (C). Choose Free, Original, 1:1, 4:5, 3:2 or 16:9, straighten up to 15° either way, then click Save Copy. The copy is saved next to the original as “name cropped”, in the same format for JPEG, PNG, HEIC and TIFF, and as JPEG for everything else.
- Rotate and flip. R and ⇧R rotate, H and V flip, and a two-finger twist on the trackpad rotates too. These only change how the photo is shown and are not saved to the file.
- Export As (⌘S). Save the photo as JPEG, PNG, HEIC or TIFF, pick the quality, scale it from 50% to 400%, and include your current adjustments. You choose the name and where it goes.
- Convert / Resize many photos. Select photos in the grid (⌘-click, ⇧-click or ⌘A), right-click and choose Convert / Resize. Pick a format, quality and longest side (Original, 4096, 2048 or 1280 px), then choose a folder. Files that already exist there are never replaced.
- Remove metadata. Both Export As and Convert / Resize have Remove metadata (EXIF & location), which leaves out camera details, dates and GPS position while keeping the photo the right way up.
- Color. Edited copies, crops and exports are saved in sRGB.
Viewing photos7
- Zoom. Double-click to zoom to that point, pinch, or press + and -. Press 0 to fit the window again and Z for actual size. Drag or scroll to move around a zoomed photo.
- Info panel (I). File details, camera settings, a histogram and, when the photo has a location, a small map with Open in Maps.
- Background (B). Cycles the stage behind the photo: Paper, Ambient (a soft glow of the photo's own colors), Black and Checkerboard.
- Fullscreen (F). The photo fills the screen and the controls fade away until you move the pointer.
- Sort. Open Sort & settings to sort by Name, Date Modified, Date Captured or Size, ascending or descending. Float window on top keeps Lumen above other windows.
- Text in photos. Right-click a photo and choose Select Text in Photo to select and copy words from it.
- Animated GIFs. GIFs play on their own. Press [ and ] to step through them frame by frame.
Slideshows and Present mode2
- Slideshow. Press Space to start or stop a slideshow with a gentle pan and zoom on each photo. In Sort & settings, choose 2, 3.5, 5 or 10 seconds a photo, and turn on Shuffle.
- Slideshow on a TV or second screen. Connect a display over HDMI, Sidecar or AirPlay (Control Center → Screen Mirroring → Use as Extended Display), then press T for Present mode. The other screen shows just the photo while you control it from your Mac.
Managing files4
- Delete. Press ⌫ to move a photo, or everything selected in the grid, to the macOS Trash. An Undo button appears right after. Lumen never deletes anything permanently.
- Rename. Right-click a photo and choose Rename. With several photos selected, Rename numbers them in the order shown, like “Holiday 01”, “Holiday 02”.
- Copy, paste and duplicate. ⌘C copies the files, ⌘V pastes them into the open folder, and ⌘D makes a copy next to the original. If a pasted name already exists, choose Keep Both, Replace (the old file goes to the Trash) or Skip.
- Drag out. Drag photos from the grid or the filmstrip into other apps. Right-click also has Share, Copy Image and Reveal in Finder.
Keyboard shortcuts5
- Moving around. ← → previous and next photo, Home and End first and last photo, G grid, Esc back, ⌘O open a folder, ⇧⌘W close the folder.
- Panels. L folders sidebar, I info panel, A adjustments, C crop and straighten, ⌘F search, Y compare, S similar shots, ? the shortcut list.
- Marks. P pick, X reject, 1 to 5 stars, 6 to 9 colour label, U undo the last mark.
- Viewing. Space slideshow, F fullscreen, T Present mode, B background, Z actual size, + - 0 zoom, R and ⇧R rotate, H and V flip, [ ] step through a GIF.
- Files. ⌘C copy, ⌘V paste, ⌘D duplicate, ⌘S Export As, ⌫ move to Trash, ⌘A select all in the grid, ⌘-click and ⇧-click to select several.
Common questions4
- Does Lumen change my folders? Never on its own. Viewing and searching are read-only. Files only change when you delete, rename, paste, duplicate or save a copy. Marking a photo adds or updates a small .xmp file beside it; clearing every mark removes the file again if Lumen made it.
- Why does Lumen ask me to open a folder again? macOS only lets sandboxed apps into folders you choose. Lumen remembers the folders you open, but if macOS forgets that permission, opening the folder again with Open Folder renews it.
- A folder is slow to appear. Folders on iCloud Drive, network drives or external disks can take a few seconds to list. Lumen shows them as soon as macOS hands them over.
- The map in the info panel is blank. The map comes from Apple Maps and needs an internet connection. Everything else in Lumen works offline.