Brighten or darken an image
Fix a photo that came out too dark, or pull back one that is too bright.
Your file
Drop a file here, or click to choose
It stays on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Settings
Small moves first
Brightness shifts the whole image up or down, contrast stretches the distance between dark and light, and saturation controls how strong the colours are. Most photos that look wrong need a little contrast rather than a lot of brightness. Try contrast first and see whether the exposure still looks off.
Use shadows for an underexposed photo
The shadows slider is gamma, and it does something brightness cannot: it lifts the dark and middle tones while leaving the bright ones close to where they are. A face photographed against a bright window is the classic case. Raising brightness lifts the face and blows out the window with it; raising shadows lifts the face and leaves the window alone.
Clipping is permanent
Areas already at pure white or pure black hold no detail to recover. Brightening a crushed shadow lifts it to grey rather than revealing what was there. This is worth knowing before you spend long on a photo that cannot be saved.
Common questions
Will this reduce quality?
The image is re-encoded, so a JPEG loses a small amount. Save to PNG if you plan more edits.
Can I fix a colour cast?
Not directly. Saturation changes colour intensity, not its balance.