Brighten or darken a video
Lift a clip that came out too dark, or pull back one that is blown out.
Your file
Drop a file here, or click to choose
It stays on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Settings
Which control to reach for
- Brightness shifts every pixel up or down. Good for footage that is uniformly too dark, but push it far and the blacks turn grey and flat.
- Shadows is gamma. It lifts the dark and middle parts of the picture while leaving the bright parts roughly where they are, so a clip shot against a window can be opened up without the window itself going white. For most underexposed footage this is the control to reach for first.
- Contrast stretches the gap between light and dark. This is usually what "looks washed out" actually needs.
- Saturation is colour intensity. Lifting brightness often leaves colour looking thin, and a small saturation bump puts it back.
What cannot be recovered
Detail that was never captured is gone. If the highlights are clipped to pure white or the shadows crushed to pure black, brightening reveals nothing there, it only makes the flat area lighter. Small corrections work well; rescuing badly exposed footage does not.
Common questions
My video is still grainy after brightening.
Brightening amplifies sensor noise along with the picture. Lower the brightness change and raise contrast instead, which is usually less noisy.
Is the audio affected?
No. Only the picture is re-encoded; the sound is copied across.