Brighten an Image

How to brighten a photo

1. Drop, choose or paste the photo. Auto brighten is applied straight away.
2. Too much or too little? Move Brightness to lift or darken the midtones, or Exposure to brighten everything.
3. Add a little Contrast if the result looks flat, and Saturation if colours look washed out.
4. Tap Original to compare, then download as JPG (smaller) or PNG (lossless).

What each control does

• Exposure multiplies the light in the photo like a camera setting: +1 stop is twice as bright. It is calculated in linear light using the sRGB standard (IEC 61966-2-1), so it behaves like real exposure rather than a flat wash of grey.
• Brightness bends the tone curve: midtones move while pure black and white stay put, so faces in a dim room brighten without the window blowing out.
• Black and white points are levels: anything darker than the black point becomes black and anything brighter than the white point becomes white. Auto sets them from the photo, ignoring the darkest and brightest 0.5% of pixels.
• Saturation scales colour away from each pixel's grey value (BT.709 luma). −100 gives black and white.

When a photo is too dark to rescue

If the shadows are pure black in the original, there is no detail left to bring back — brightening turns them grey, not into a picture. For those, a black and white conversion often hides the noise and looks deliberate. To check what your camera recorded, open the file in the EXIF viewer: a very high ISO or a short shutter speed explains a dark, grainy shot.