Workspaces and panels

Lumit’s panels dock and split. An arrangement of panels is a workspace, and there are seven shipped ones plus however many you save.

A workspace: Viewer, Timeline, and Project docked together.

The panels

Every panel is in the Window menu, with a tick showing whether it is in the arrangement. Toggling one adds or drops it.

Panel	What it is for
Viewer	The picture, and the tools that work on it.
Project	Assets and folders.
Timeline	Time, layers, keyframes, and the graph editor.
Cut timeline	The composition’s layers as tracks of clips. See Cutting.
Effect controls	The selected layer’s whole effect stack, parameter by parameter.
Effects & presets	Every effect, preset and installed plugin.
Node graph	Boxes and wires: the selected layer’s stack, a Custom shader’s inner graph, or a node graph composition. See The node graph.
Node	The parameter rows of whichever box the Node graph has picked, and the form of a Read or Input box.
Easing	Shape a curve and apply it to the selected keyframes.
Scopes	Waveform and vectorscope.
Text	The font, size, spacing and outline of a text layer.
Paragraph	How a text layer’s lines are aligned, indented and spaced.
Expressions	Saved expressions, and an editor that applies one.
Stagger	Starts the selected layers a set number of frames apart. See Stagger.
Notes	One page of text kept in the project file.
Align	Moves the selected layers’ anchor points, or lines the layers up with the composition. See Align.
Hierarchy	The open composition’s layers as a tree, precomps expandable.
Debug view	Engine readouts. Off unless you turn it on from the Help menu.
Mixer	A strip per audible layer, and the Master strip. See Mixer.
Audio	Output levels, beats, and the selected layer’s sound. See Audio panel.
Audio timeline	A row per layer that makes a sound, with its wave on the lane. See Audio timeline.

Rearrange

Drag a panel’s tab. The frame you drag it over shows where it would land:

• Over the middle joins that group as another tab.
• Near an edge splits the frame and puts the panel on that side. The panels either side resize proportionally.

Drag a seam between two panels to change their share. Press ` (backtick) with the pointer over a panel to maximise it to the whole window, and again to put it back.

Right-clicking a panel’s tab offers Close panel.

Stack a group

Right-click a tab and tick Stacked group. The group’s panels are drawn one above another, each under a header with its name.

• Click a header to twirl its panel open or shut. The open panels share the height.
• Drag the seam between two open panels to change their heights.
• Drag a header to move its panel, the same as a tab. A panel dropped on a header or on an open panel joins the stack below it.
• One open at a time, in a header’s right-click menu, shuts the others when one opens.

A panel ticked in the Window menu joins a stack when the arrangement has one. Unticking Stacked group turns the stack back into tabs.

Not built yet

Panels cannot be torn off into their own operating-system window.

The shipped workspaces

The strip at the right-hand end of the toolbar switches between them, and so does Window ▸ Workspace. Alt+Shift+1 to Alt+Shift+9 reach them by position, counting the presets first and then your own. Each button’s tooltip gives its name and its shortcut.

Workspace	Arranged for
Edit	The default. Project, Effect controls and Notes tabbed on the left, Viewer centre, Timeline across the bottom, and a stack on the right: Effects & presets open, with Text, Paragraph, Align and Stagger shut below it.
Effects	Project and Effect controls tabbed on the left, Viewer centre, the Easing panel beside it, and a stack at the right-hand edge with Effects & presets open and Expressions and Scopes shut.
Nodes	The Node graph across most of the window, a short Timeline under it, a small Viewer down the right, and the Node panel open under it with Effects & presets and Expressions shut.
Colour	Project and Effect controls tabbed on the left, Viewer dominant, and a wide right-hand column with Scopes open and Effects & presets shut below it.
Audio	Mixer in front of Project and Effect controls on the left, Viewer centre, the Audio panel open on the right with Effects & presets shut below it, and the Audio timeline across the bottom.
Retiming	The Easing panel open on the right, with Stagger and Expressions shut below it.
Cut	Project, Effect controls, Effects & presets and Notes tabbed on the left, a Viewer showing a source view beside the composition, and the Cut timeline across the bottom with the Mixer at its right.

Rearranging under a preset moves the panels and leaves the preset alone. Window ▸ Workspace ▸ Reset workspace puts the preset you are on back to how it shipped.

Save your own

Window ▸ Workspace ▸ Save as new workspace… asks for a name and writes the arrangement out. It joins the strip beside the presets.

The same menu carries Rename workspace…, Delete workspace, Export workspace… and Import workspace…, each live only on one of your own. Export writes a .lumworkspace file; Import reads one.

Your workspaces are listed alphabetically. A name is taken only once: saving a second Grading gives you Grading 2.

A workspace of your own keeps what you drag into it. Move a panel while one is in force and the change is written back to its file. Deleting one leaves the panels on screen where they are.

What the project stores

A project opened on another machine is the same edit under that machine’s panel arrangement.

Yours, per user	The project’s
Which panels are open, where, size	Which compositions are open, and which is in front
Timeline column visibility and widths	Per-composition Viewer state: resolution, magnification, channel, guides
Interface scale, tooltips, motion	Per-composition Timeline state: twirls, work area, playhead, zoom, horizontal and vertical scroll
Where a settings or export window was left	Guides, markers, the region of interest

Switching workspace never closes, reloads or re-renders anything. It only moves panels.

How large everything draws

Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Interface ▸ Scale runs from 75 % to 200 % in steps of 5, with a field beside the slider for typing value.

Three more settings sit under it: Tooltips, on or off; Motion, how much controls animate as they change; and Compact, which tightens row spacing throughout.

A tooltip gives the control’s name and its shortcut, as the keymap has it now.

The command palette

Ctrl+Shift+P opens the command palette, and so does the box at the right-hand end of the menu bar. It finds every menu command, composition, layer, effect, panel and setting by name, and Enter runs or opens the one highlighted.

The command palette, with a badge on each row saying what it is.

A layer row selects that layer in the open composition, and a setting row opens Settings on that setting. An effect row reads Select a layer first while no layer is selected.

The menu bar

Nine menus: File, Edit, Composition, Layer, Effect, Animation, View, Window, Help. A menu item that needs something you have not selected appears disabled. A command that is not built yet is left off its menu.

On Windows the menu bar is the window’s top line, with Minimise, Maximise (or Restore) and Close at its right. Dragging the empty part of the line moves the window, and a double-click maximises it or puts it back. On Linux the same line replaces the system’s title bar when Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Lumit’s own title bar is on, from the next start. macOS keeps its own title bar.

The window is at least 840 × 560.

Edit ▸ Undo and Redo name the step they would take, as Edit ▸ History lists it.

The status line

The strip along the bottom of the window. Left to right:

Part	Shows
Profile	The profile button. See Profiles.
Update	Where the updater has got to. A press checks, downloads or restarts. See Updating.
Nightly	A pill, on a nightly build only.
Previews	Comments nobody has looked at, or a ring while a composition uploads. It opens the Previews window. See Review links.
Saved state	No project, Not saved yet, Saved or Unsaved changes.
Backup	The open project’s backup, with Pro. See Backup.
Cache	How full the RAM, VRAM and disk tiers are. Click it to clear them.
Hourglass	Turns render-time measuring on and off. See the Timeline.
Shared	While a project is shared, who is in it. It opens the Multi-edit window. See Shared projects.
Notice	The latest message. Click it to list the last twenty.
Jobs	A running export or proxy, with its progress and a Cancel.
Output peak	While playing, what the sound output peaked at, in dB.
Hint	What the armed tool’s modifier keys do, at the right-hand end.

Related

• Settings
• The node graph