Portrait relight guide

Help

Short answers to what goes wrong most often.

The frame says the effect needs WebGL

Portrait relight draws with WebGL, and this browser has it turned off. Turn on the browser's graphics acceleration, update it, or try another current browser.

Tapping the picture does nothing

A tap during a run is ignored, so a run is never cut in half. Wait for it to finish, or press Replay, which always starts again at once. A run also only starts from a tap with the main mouse button or a finger. With Orbit sweep at 0 the light does not move, so a run looks like nothing happened.

Tapping in a different place changes nothing

That is expected. The light's path comes from Key azimuth, Key elevation and Orbit sweep, not from where you tap.

The picture on screen is B, not A

Each finished wipe swaps the pictures' turns, and the one it revealed stays on screen. Turning the wipe off, or pressing Reset, goes back to picture A.

The relief looks wrong, flat or noisy

The tool guesses shape from brightness alone, so bright parts always read as raised and dark parts as sunken, whatever they really are. Lower Relief depth for a busy or grainy picture; raise it for a soft one. A lower Key elevation makes the relief easier to see.

My picture looks stretched

The frame takes the shape of picture A, and picture B is stretched to that shape. Crop both pictures to the same shape first. Replacing A changes the frame's shape; replacing B does not.

My picture did not change

A file the browser cannot open as an image is skipped without a message. Try a JPEG, PNG or WebP copy of it. See JPEG, PNG and WebP.

It is slow, or the page struggles with a big photo

The pictures go to the graphics card at their full size, with no resizing, so a very large photo takes more memory. Use a smaller copy on a phone or an older computer. The size of the frame costs the most work.

Record video did nothing

The line under the buttons says why: some browsers cannot record a canvas, or offer no video format the page can use. Try a current Chrome, Edge or Firefox.

Where do my pictures go?

Nowhere. They are opened in your browser and drawn on your graphics card. Nothing is uploaded. The pictures you add stay on this device, in this browser, so the other lab tools can open them too; × on a picture removes it.

Are there keyboard shortcuts?

The tool has none of its own. Anywhere in the lab, Ctrl K, or Cmd K on a Mac, opens the list of all tools.

On a phone

It works with a finger: tap the picture to start a run. The controls sit in a bar at the bottom of the screen; tap the bar to open them.