Tool Presets

Tool Presets are the centre of Lumi’s tool workflow. Every tool is used through a preset, whether it is a quiet default or a handmade tool saved by the artist. This makes tool behaviour visible, intentional, and repeatable.

The idea is simple: an artist builds a small, stable set of familiar tools, gives them clear identities, and switches between them as naturally as reaching for different brushes, pens, knives, or blenders in a studio.

Handmade tools, not loose settings

A tool preset is more than a saved adjustment. It is a complete authored tool: the tool identity, its working feel, its setup choices, and, when needed, its private brush, dynamics, gradient, or icon.

This lets a preset behave like a real object in the artist’s toolkit. A favourite sketch pencil can stay a sketch pencil. A blocking brush can keep its broad, simple character. A finishing brush can remain precise and familiar. The tool is not rebuilt from memory each time; it is selected as a known instrument.

A calmer Tool Options area

Lumi separates the controls that are changed while working from the controls that define how a tool is built. Frequent, in-the-moment adjustments stay close to the canvas. Lower-frequency setup choices move into dedicated preset editing spaces.

This keeps the Tool Options area lighter and easier to read during painting. The artist sees the controls that matter in the flow of a stroke or edit, while deeper authorship remains available without crowding the everyday interface.

Preset authoring

The Tool Preset Editor is where a tool becomes deliberate. It gives the preset a name, a visual identity, and the deeper behaviour that makes it worth keeping.

For paint tools, this can include the brush resources and dynamic behaviour that define the character of the mark. For other tools, it can preserve the settings and working style that make a particular editing action feel consistent. The same preset idea applies across the toolset, so Lumi treats authored tool state as a shared system rather than a paint-only convenience.

A visual tool shelf

Saved presets can be presented like tool buttons, complete with custom icons. This turns a preset collection into a recognisable shelf of handmade tools rather than a list of anonymous configurations.

The visual identity matters. Artists can choose tools by shape, colour, icon, and habit, building the same kind of muscle memory they develop with physical materials. A small row of trusted presets can become faster and more personal than repeatedly searching through settings.

Workspace-aware toolkits

Tool presets become especially powerful when combined with Workspaces. A drawing workspace can bring forward drawing tools, an inking workspace can favour clean line presets, and a painting workspace can switch to brushes built for colour, texture, and blending.

This means changing workspace can also change the available toolkit. The studio does not only rearrange its panels; it can restock itself with the tools that belong to the current task.

Stability across tool switches

Because every tool operates through a preset, switching tools does not have to mean losing the last useful state. Lumi can keep each tool connected to its active preset, so returning to a tool brings back the familiar instrument the artist was using.

This makes tool switching feel stable. The pencil, brush, transform tool, or selection tool can each remember its authored state without relying on invisible per-tool option files.

Portable authorship

A preset owns the resources that make it feel unique. For a brush preset, the brush, dynamics, and icon can live inside the preset itself, so the tool remains complete even when the wider resource library changes.

This is a deliberate simplification: a saved tool is not a fragile pointer to several separate moving parts. Brushes and dynamics can still be saved to reusable libraries, but when they are chosen for a preset they are copied into that authored tool.

For artists, the important part is that a tool can be saved as a complete creative decision. Its behaviour, identity, and resources travel together, making tool presets a practical foundation for personal workflows, project-specific toolkits, and shared studio setups.

A familiar set of instruments

The overall goal is not to make artists manage hundreds of presets. It is to make a small set of well-made tools feel stable, recognisable, and close at hand.

Lumi’s preset system supports that kind of working rhythm: make the tools once, refine them over time, give them visual identities, and let each workspace put the right instruments in reach.