User Manual — LUMISELA Photo

1. Screen and basic operations

On first launch, the app opens a 1600 × 1200 px canvas with a white background and a transparent “Layer 1.” The layer highlighted in blue is the active editing target.

Left: File actions, tools, foreground/background colors, brush size, and zoom.
Top: Undo/Redo, Edit/Image/Layer/Color/View menus, and options for the selected tool.
Center: The canvas. Edit with Apple Pencil or one finger; use two fingers to pan, zoom, and rotate the view.
Right: Layers, Paint, Adjustments, Effects, and History. If hidden, reopen it with the panel button at the top right.

While a selection is active, drawing, erasing, fills, gradients, and effects are limited to that area. If an operation appears to do nothing, check for an active selection and use “Deselect” when appropriate.

Display language

The default is Automatic: Japanese is used when the device's first preferred language is Japanese, and English is used for every other language. Tap “LUMISELA Photo” at the top left and choose “Automatic,” “Japanese,” or “English.” The left toolbar, right panels, tool settings, menus, and app information all change immediately without restarting, and the choice is remembered for future launches.

Website, manual, support, and privacy links also open in the selected language. Use the ⓘ button beside the app name to open app information and support.

Quick-start workflow

Open the image using "Open" or "File" on the left.
To preserve the original, paint on a new transparent layer above it or duplicate the image layer.
Paint, select, adjust color and tone, and add effects.
Save an editable master as a .lumisela document with “Layered.”
Export the completed image as PNG, JPEG, TIFF or PSD.

2. Open, save, and file formats

Left button	Result	Notes
Open	Open a photo-library image as a new canvas with a background and transparent layer	Replaces the current document
Files	Open an image, RAW, PDF, PSD, or LUMISELA Photo document from Files	Unsupported formats show an error
Image+	Add a photo to the current document as a new image layer	Canvas is not replaced
Layer	Add a transparent pixel layer	For painting and compositing
Text	Add an editable text layer	Content, font, and position remain editable
PNG	Flattened image with transparency	Layers are composited
JPEG	High-quality JPEG	Transparent areas become white; layers are merged
TIFF	16-bit RGBA TIFF with transparency	For high-precision delivery
PSD	Layered 8-bit RGB PSD	Adobe-specific features are not fully compatible
Layered	Export an editable `.lumisela` master	Preserves the most LUMISELA Photo editing data

Import

iOS Image I/O compatible images, such as PNG, JPEG, HEIF/HEIC, TIFF, GIF, BMP, WebP.
Camera RAW formats supported by Apple’s system RAW engine, including lens correction where available.
PDF rasterizes only the first page to a white background.
PSD imports RGB 8/16-bit pixel layers, groups, masks, clipping, position, visibility, opacity, compatible blend modes, and ICC profiles.
.lumisela documents. Legacy .velora, .chromatrellis, and pre-release .prisma documents are also accepted.

What PSD preserves

PSD preserves pixel layers, group names, masks, clipping, layer positions, visibility, opacity, compatible blend modes, and ICC profiles. Text, vectors, adjustments, effects, Live Strokes, and layer styles are rasterized to preserve their appearance. Adjustment layers affect the composite preview but are not exported as independent PSD adjustment layers.

PSB, CMYK, 32-bit PSD, and Smart Objects are not supported. Use PSD for transfer to another editor and .lumisela as the editable LUMISELA Photo master.

Automatic recovery

Recovery data is saved on-device about 1.5 seconds after a change, when the app enters the background, and when it closes. At launch, the app checks both the newest recovery file and its backup. Export important work regularly with “Layered.”

3. Canvas and display

Two-finger drag: Pan the canvas view. The layer itself does not move.
Two-finger pinch: Zoom in or out from 25 to 800%.
Two-finger rotation: Rotate only the display. Export results are not rotated.
Left zoom buttons: Zoom in or out in steps. Tap the zoom percentage to reset the entire view.

View menu

Show or hide the grid, snap to guides, grid, or edges, and choose grid spacing (25/50/100/200 px), line width (0.5/1/1.5/2/3 px), opacity (15/25/40/60/85%), and color. New horizontal and vertical guides begin in the center and can be dragged. Grids and guides are never exported.

Image menu

Canvas Size: Changes the frame without scaling the image, anchored from the canvas center.
Scale Image: Resamples the canvas and every layer.
Trim to Content: Crops to the smallest rectangle containing opaque content from all layers.
Rotate by Angle: Rotates in 0.5° steps and expands the canvas so the result is not clipped.
Flip Horizontal/Vertical and Rotate 90°: Affects the entire document.

The maximum is 12,000 px per side, 64,000,000 pixels in total. Loaded images that are too large will be scaled down keeping the aspect ratio.

4. All tools on the left

Move

Pan, zoom, and rotate the canvas view. Use the top slider for a precise view angle, and reset either rotation alone or the complete view. To reposition a layer itself, use Transform.

Transform

“Normal” moves, scales, and rotates the selected layer. “Perspective” moves the four corners independently. Confirm with “Apply Transform” or discard the pending transform with “Reset.”

Select

Choose Rectangle, Ellipse, Lasso, edge-seeking Magnetic Lasso, contiguous-color Fuzzy Select, or Color Range for similar colors throughout the image. Combine with the current selection using Replace, Add, Subtract, or Intersect.

A higher Threshold includes a wider color range; Smooth anti-aliases the boundary. You can select all, invert, deselect, clear, select opaque pixels, expand or contract by 2/4/8/16 px, feather by 2/4/8/16/32 px, and refine edges for natural subjects, hair, fine details, or hard edges.

Path

Tap to create an anchor; drag while creating it to add curve handles. Smooth, straighten, or delete anchors, convert a path to a selection, stroke or fill it, or create an editable vector layer. Built-in shapes include rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, and stars.

Brush / Eraser

The Brush paints with the foreground color; the Eraser makes pixels transparent. In mask editing, Brush hides and Eraser reveals. See the next chapter for Normal, Live, and Effects modes. Preview and committed paint are clipped to the canvas.

Gradient

Draw from foreground to background color using Linear, Bi-linear, Radial, Square, Conical, or Spiral shapes. Repeat modes are None, Sawtooth, and Triangular. Opacity ranges from 5–100%.

Clone / Heal

When no source is set, the first stroke chooses it and the next stroke paints. Use “Clear Source” to choose again. Alignment modes are None, Aligned, Registered, and Fixed. Heal uses the source texture while blending into surrounding color and luminance.

Dodge / Burn / Blur Brush

Dodge brightens and Burn darkens. Blur Brush applies blur or sharpening locally. All support 5–100% strength and 2–500 px size.

Fill

If a selection exists, Fill covers it. Otherwise, it flood-fills connected similar colors from the tapped point. A higher threshold accepts a wider color difference.

Eyedropper

Samples the composited color at the tapped point into the foreground color.

Crop

Drag the area to keep, refine it with the frame and handles, then use “Apply Crop” to crop the full document. Use “Cancel” to discard the pending crop.

Adjust / Effects

Shortcuts to the Adjustments and Effects tabs in the right panel.

5. Brush/Live Stroke/Effect brush

Mode	Result	After drawing
Normal	Commits paint directly to pixels on the image layer	Individual strokes cannot be edited after they leave History
Live	Stores path, pressure, speed, and brush settings in a dedicated layer	Reapply the current brush, color, or size; undo the last stroke
Effects	Stores strokes as masks for a non-destructive local effect	Change effect type or intensity; undo the last stroke

Nine effect brushes

Lighten, Darken, Saturate, Desaturate, Warm, Cool, Blur, Bloom, and Pixelate. Intensity ranges from 5–100% and remains editable after you select an existing effect layer.

Brush settings

Size 2-500 px, opacity 5-100%, strength, flow.
Round, square, or diamond tip; hardness, angle, aspect ratio, and spacing.
Jitter, jitter amount, fade, stroke stabilization, and incremental paint buildup.
Swap foreground/background colors, initialize to black/white.

Presets and dynamics

Paint presets include airbrushes, palette knives, round and bristle brushes, hard erasers, texture/noise brushes, gradient-color brushes, smudge tools, soft oils, splatters, and vegetation. Sketch presets include blue pen, soft eraser, smooth or fine ink, soft pencil, and pencil.

Dynamics include Basic, Pressure Opacity, Pressure Size, Generic Pen, Generic Pencil, Pencil Shading, Color from Gradient, Fade Tapering, Velocity Tapering, and Perspective. Compatible iPad and Apple Pencil hardware provide pressure input.

Custom brushes

Save: Save all current brush settings to your device.
Material: Generate grayscale brush tip and representative color from selected image layer.
Import/Share: Exchange an individual brush as .lbrush. Legacy .vbrush and .ctbrush files are accepted.
Pack: Exchange brushes, sampled colors, a layer style, and an effect recipe as .lpack. Legacy .vpack and .ctpack files are accepted.

6. Layers, masks and styles

List operations

Rows higher in the list render in front. Tap to select, use the eye to toggle visibility, double-tap to rename, or touch and hold for about 0.3 seconds before dragging to reorder. You can duplicate, delete, move, merge down, flatten, group, and ungroup.

Pixel and adjustment layers

Pixel layers contain images or paint. Adjustment layers contain no pixels and apply non-destructive corrections to the composite below.

Opacity/blending/clipping

Opacity ranges from 0–100%. The 25 blend modes include Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Lighten, Difference, Addition, Soft/Hard Light, Dodge, Burn/Linear Burn, Exclusion, Subtract, Divide, Hue, Saturation, Color, Luminosity, Grain Extract/Merge, and Linear/Pin/Vivid Light.

“Clip to Layer Below” shows the current layer only where the pixel layer directly below is opaque. Adjustment layers can use clipping in the same way to limit their effect.

Masks

Add a white mask with “+” and edit it with the pencil button. White reveals; black hides. While mask editing is active, Brush hides and Eraser reveals. The trash button removes only the mask.

Background removal

Makes edge-connected background colors transparent. Tolerance 8–140 controls the accepted color range; Edge 0–8 px controls softness. This is color-based removal rather than AI recognition, so finish similar-colored subjects with a mask.

Layer styles

You can non-destructively set the border width and color, shadow color, opacity, blur, X/Y position, and glow color, opacity, and spread, and reset them all at once.

7. Text and vectors

Text

You can change the content, size 8 to 400 px, color, left/center/right alignment, bold, italic, underline, character spacing -10 to 50, line spacing 0 to 200, X/Y position, and canvas center alignment later.

Fonts include System, Hiragino Kaku Gothic, Hiragino Mincho, Helvetica, Avenir, Georgia, Courier, Times, Marker Felt, and Snell. Text remains editable in .lumisela and is rasterized for PSD and image export.

Vectors

Rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, stars, and custom paths support editable fill, stroke, 0–100 px stroke width, 0–300 px corner radius, 3–20 sides, and open/closed state. Use “Edit Anchors” to return a custom path to the Path tool. Vector data remains editable in .lumisela.

8. Adjustments

On a pixel layer, adjustments affect only that layer. On an adjustment layer, they non-destructively affect the composite below. Tap a numeric value to reset that control alone, or use “Reset” to restore every adjustment.

Histogram, exposure -2~+2 EV, brightness, contrast 0.25~4x, saturation 0~2x, hue, color temperature 3000~9000K.
Level: Input black point/white point, gamma 0.1 to 3, output black point/white point.
Tone curve: entire RGB or R/G/B. Add points by tapping the blank space, and delete by dragging the middle point outside the top and bottom edges.
Color Balance: Cyan↔Red, Magenta↔Green, and Yellow↔Blue for Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights, with optional Preserve Luminosity.
Hue/Saturation: Overall, hue/lightness/saturation for each red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, and overlap of adjacent color gamuts.

Direct Color-menu operations

Desaturate offers Luminance, Luma, Lightness, Average, and Value methods. The menu also includes Invert, Auto White Balance, Auto Contrast Stretch, Histogram Equalization, and Color/White to Alpha. These operations modify the selected layer’s pixels, so duplicate it first when you need a reversible workflow.

9. Twenty-five effects and filters

Select a pixel layer containing an image and open “Effects” on the right.
Tap an effect to see a live preview and intensity slider.
Tap the same effect again or "Cancel" to cancel the preview.
Set the intensity and tap “Add.” Applied effects can still be enabled, disabled, adjusted, or deleted later.
If a selection is active, the effect preserves and uses that selection.

Effect	Result / slider behavior
Sepia / Monochrome / Noir / Invert Colors	Tonal conversion; slider controls the blend with the original
Vignette	Darkness around the image edges
Comic	Illustrated outlines and tonal shading; slider controls the blend
Pixelate	Block size of approximately 2–60 px
Bloom	Glow spread from bright areas
Sharpen	Amount of luminance-edge enhancement
Blur	Gaussian blur from about 1 to 30 px
Posterize	Reduces tonal steps from approximately 16 to 2
Edge Detection	Contour intensity
Crystallize	Polygonal cell size of approximately 3–40 px
Unsharp Mask	Sharpening amount derived from a blurred copy
Motion / Zoom Blur	Directional blur of approximately 1–50 px / radial blur from the center
Twirl	Twist from −360° to +360°
Emboss	Relief from luminance differences; slider controls the blend
Newsprint	Halftone dot size of approximately 3–16 px
Noise	Amount of random grain
Kaleidoscope	Symmetric reflection with approximately 2–12 segments
Threshold	Luminance cutoff for black-and-white conversion
Median	Reduces isolated noise using neighboring median values; slider controls the blend
Dilate Highlights / Erode Shadows	Expands light or dark regions by approximately 1–10 px

10. Menu and history

Edit

Copy/Cut: Select range, or if there is no selection, move the current layer to the clipboard. Cuts become transparent after copying.
Paste as layer: Creates a new layer from the clipboard image.
Fill with foreground/background color, draw selection border, erase selection.

Layer menu

Duplicate, delete, horizontally/vertically flip only the layer, fit to canvas, select opaque areas, merge with bottom, and merge images. The Image menu works on the entire document, and the Layer menu works on the selected layer.

History

In addition to Undo/Redo at the top, you can tap any state in the History panel to return to it. History stores up to 40 operations, with fewer entries on large documents to protect memory. Making a new edit after moving back discards later redo states.

11. Practical workflows

Apply an editable blur to part of a photo

Create an area with a selection tool.
Choose Effects → Blur, set the intensity, then tap Add.
Adjust, disable, or delete the blur from the Applied Effects list.

Paint inside a subject without spilling outside

Add a pixel layer above the subject layer.
Enable “Clip to Layer Below.”
Paint in Live mode so the brush and color remain editable.

Correct overall color without altering the original

Add an adjustment layer.
Adjust exposure, curves, color balance, and other tonal controls.
Limit the intensity or area with opacity and a mask.

Make your own art supplies from photos

Select the material image layer.
Choose Paint → Material.
Paint in Live mode with the generated brush and sampled colors.
Share with .lbrush or .lpack.

12. Limits, troubleshooting & support

Frequently asked questions

Can’t draw: Check that a visible pixel layer is selected, whether a selection is still active, and whether mask editing is enabled.
Can’t add an effect: Select a pixel layer rather than an adjustment layer. Edit adjustment layers in the Adjustments tab.
Effect intensity: Adjust it in the live-preview controls before adding, or in the applied-effect row afterward.
Clone/Heal paints nothing: The first stroke sets the source; paint with the next stroke.
Brush preview outside the canvas: Build 6 and later clip both preview and committed paint to the canvas. Update older builds.
Out of memory: Reduce image dimensions, merge unnecessary layers, and close other apps. Save a .lumisela master before flattening.

Not currently supported

AI object removal, generated fill, CMYK editing, PSB, 32bit PSD, smart objects, videos, and multi-page PDF editing are not supported.

Privacy and inquiries

Image processing is done within the device and the work is not sent to the operator's server. There are no accounts, ads, analytics, or tracking features.

FAQ/Support ／ Privacy Policy ／ Apple Standard EULA ／ letternewsjapan@gmail.com

When reporting a bug, please include the device name, OS, app version/build, image size, previous tool, and steps to reproduce. There's no need to send work you don't want published.