Effective Ways to Brighten a Picture in PhotoShop

Can a visually dull photo do any good to your content feeds? To be very honest! No! Luckily, you can brighten a picture in PhotoShop and other editing suites to create perfect light balance. A bright and vibrant image is mandatory, be it a profile photo for social media platforms, product images for websites, image content for banners or advertisements, or materials for educational or merchandise purposes. Read this ultimate guide for learning multiple ways to choose and set the best light and exposure for your photos and transform them into stunning visuals.

How to brighten a picture in PhotoShop

PhotoShop is a professional graphic editing platform that houses every basic and advanced tool to cater to your desired editing journey. Though exclusively dedicated to professionals and expert graphic editors, PhotoShop offers multiple ways to enhance the visual appeal of your photos by adjusting and fine-tuning the light, colors, contrasts, and brightness. Here are several ways to brighten a picture in PhotoShop and win your content game.

1. Brightness/Contrast

If your recent product shoot lacks that due glam and brightness, bring it to PhotoShop and use its brightness/contrast feature to adjust the light. You can now conveniently play around with photos clicked in low light and brighten image in PhotoShop. Here, you can regulate the exposure and brightness of pictures by working on the image's dark parts, mid-tones, and bright parts. It also helps fix the shadows in the photo, making it dull and unattractive. Follow the easy steps to brighten an image in PhotoShop.



Step
1. In the main interface, upload a photo and navigate to the Image option.
Step
2. Click the option of Adjustment followed by selecting Brightness/Contrast from the drop-down. Drag the slider to the desired range to adjust the brightness and exposure of your photos.

2. Exposure

Image exposure and brightness make a difference. PhotoShop exclusively allows you to brighten a picture in PhotoShop by settling the exposure. It works on shadows, mid-tones, and highlighting images in balanced proportions. It can also help mediate displacement and gamma corrections in dark and low-light photos. Here are the easy steps.



Step
1. Add a photo to the main interface and click the yin yang icon to open the Layers panel. Then, click the Adjustment panel.
Step
2. In the next step, select Exposure and drag the slider to fix the brightness.

3. Color Levels

If you want to change the light and shade of your professional profile photo or product ad campaign images, then PhotoShop offers you its color level feature to set the desired tone in each portion of the image. Use this brighten photo PhotoShop feature to decide the pixel distribution in photos from darker to lighter tones. Color-level histograms basically deal with setting either a darker or lighter outlook for mid-tones in your photos. Here is how.



Step
1. Add a photo to the media timeline and click the option of Layers < Adjustment.
Step
2. In the adjustment panel, select the color levels and drag the slider to adjust the brightness level.

4. Curve

You can also use the curves feature to brighten image in PhotoShop. This involves playing with each pixel to fix the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights point to point. It is portrayed in the form of a histogram. You can click arbitrary points on the histogram to fine-tune the brightness. Here is how to fix your professional photos in two easy steps.



Step
1. Click the yin yang icon to open the Layers panel. Select the option of the Adjustment layer.
Step
2. In the Adjustment panel, choose the Curves icon and start fixing point-by-point pixels to add missing brightness to the photo. Drag the slider to set the brightness.

5. Camera Raw

Camera Raw is a modern plugin that facilitates transforming raw format images into widely acceptable image formats (GIF and JPG) and continuing advanced editing. It works as a filter or mask to add to the layers in photos during post-image processing. You can adjust the light and shades in photos by generating new layers and superimposing the camera raw effect without getting into the tedious task of applying effects and saving layers over and over. Here is how you can brighten a picture in PhotoShop with the camera raw feature.



Step
1. Import the raw image to the timeline and create a new layer.
Step
2. To the new layer, click filters and select the option of camera raw filter. Apply the filter and move the slider to make custom adjustments to a new layer and save.

6. Dodge & Burn

It is about time to revive your photography. This feature is quite easy to understand if you are more into painting. Like white (bright) and black (dark) colors, a white brush will add brightness, and a black brush will induce a darker region in the photo. You can manually control the extent of brightness and darkness by drawing smears and shapes with dodge and burn tools.



Step
1. Add a photo to the timeline and click the handtool icon in the toolbar in the left panel.
Step
2. Click the dodge/burn tool to brighten or darken the photo.

7. Black and White Filling

The black-and-white filling option resembles the dodge-and-burn feature. You can brighten a picture in PhotoShop by blending white and black colors in accurate proportions. It helps control the level of brightness by changing the blending mode. Here are the steps to follow:



Step
1. Add an image to the interface and create a new blank layer. Change the blending mode to Overlay.
Step
2. In the next step, click Edit and select the Fill option. In the pop-up window, select white to fill to enhance the brightness.

8. Multi-plate Stamp Clone

Are you into professional photography and post-image processing? You can brighten photo in PhotoShop via its multi-plate stamp clone feature. It is dedicatedly curated for professionals and expert graphic editors to uplift photos with stunning visuals. Here are the easy steps.



Step
1. Add the photo to the media timeline and create a copy in the new layer.
Step
2. Click curves and set the brightness level from the Adjustment panel by dragging the slider. Once you set the brightness, merge the layers.
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3. Enlarge the copied and original images and select the Clone Stamp tool option. In the next step, move the cursor to the copied image and create a clone smear. Use the brush tool to lighten the portions of the image you want to brighten.

How to brighten a photo with Lightroom

If you feel that the new solo shoot is underexposed or carries a bad light with dark exposure, brightening a picture in PhotoShop Lightroom can serve the purpose. The platform features multiple ways to enhance your photos' outlook, from one-click adjustments to advanced custom settings. Here are a few viable ways to adjust light and exposure issues. Keep reading to learn.

1. Adjust Exposure to affect the overall brightness

Using the Exposure feature in Adobe Lightroom is a simplified process to add brightness to otherwise dull and dark images. You have to drag the slider to adjust the light and tonal data of the photo. Here are the two easy steps.



Step
1. Import the underexposed photo to the Lightroom interface and open it in the timeline.
Step
2. Click Develop to open the toolbar panel. In the Tone section, drag the slider to adjust the settings for the Exposure option.

2. Individually edit Highlights and Shadows

Images with a dull outlook can decrease the impression of your content. Adobe Lightroom offers diverse features of Highlights and Shadows to brighten image in PhotoShop. You can enhance the brightness of a dull photo without losing the intricate details or undertone the overexposed regions in the photo to uplift the texture. Curious to know how? Here you go.



Step
1. Once you add the target photo to the media timeline, click the Develop option in the top toolbar.
Step
2. In the Basic panel, click to drag the sliders for the options of Highlight or Shadows to adjust the brightness. Moving sliders to the right will increase brightness in the Highlight feature, whereas it will increase darkness for the Shadows option.

3. Fine-tune the black and white tones in your image

As the name implies, the black and white tone feature helps fix the brightness with the ease of dragging the slider. Consider your beach scene photo as an example. You want to customize the photo areas to enhance brightness and keep up with the overall image quality and detailing. Here are the easy steps to brighten an image in PhotoShop Lightroom.



Step
1. In the Lightroom interface, click Develop in the main menu once you add a photo to the timeline.
Step
2. On the basic panel, under the shadows option, there are sliders for white and black tones. Drag the sliders to adjust the tones.

4. Use the Auto button for instant enhancement

Suppose you are interested in something other than tedious tasks for fine-tuning brightness in your photos. In that case, Lightroom offers a one-tap feature that automatically fixes photos for multiple aspects. This includes auto-fixing Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Saturation, and Vibrance at once. The feature also helps remove distortions and apply lens corrections. Here is how to perform this one-tap action.



Step
1. Import photos to the Lightroom interface and click the Develop option to open the Basic panel.
Step
2. In the basic panel, navigate to the Tone section and click the Auto button to automate the fine-tuning of photos. It automatically fixes Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Saturation, and Vibrance.

How to brighten a photo without PhotoShop

Though it's possible to brighten a picture in PhotoShop and Lightroom, many users find it tricky to use them. The complexity is attributed to their editing modules, which are specially crafted for professionals and experts.

Besides Adobe, it is now way simpler to brighten up your dull and dark photos. All credits go to the incredible CapCut low-light image enhancer that adds clarity, brightness, and visual appeal to your photo captured in low light. Expect a bright image with clear visuals without distortion, noise, or grain. Keep the ball rolling to unveil its key features:

• Auto-brighten dark or low-light images
• Its advanced AI automatically gauges the dark regions in your photos, adds brightness, and maintains image quality by preserving details, texture, and features.
• Face identification
• CapCut low-light image enhancer is more than just an image brightening tool. It can identify faces in photos and undergoes fine adjustments to portray the best outlook. You can customize the skin tones and enhance features into breathtaking visuals.
• Adjust color, clarity, and saturation levels
• Apart from identifying low-light regions, it can add vibrant colors, fix saturation and hue issues, define clarity, and boost visual appeal.

Steps to brighten photos in CapCut

Take it all in your hand and add missing brightness, exposure, and white balance to your image with CapCut low-light image enhancer in three easy steps.

Click the link below to access the CapCut low-light image enhancer online for free.

Step
1. Upload photo
2. In the tool's interface, click Upload to add a photo from the device storage. CapCut offers you multiple ways to upload media to the tool's interface. You can add photos from CapCut's cloud space, Google Drive, or Dropbox. Moreover, you can use the option of Drag and drop file here.
3. 

   

Step
4. Select correction
5. Once the media is added, select the desired level of intensity of color correction. The tool offers four distinct levels. Click the one that matches your requirements.
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7. The preset level template will be applied to your photo in real time. You can also take your photo to CapCut web editor for further processing via the Edit more option. Here, you can add text, filters, effects, transitions, animations, captions, elements, etc.
8. 

   

Step
9. Export

If you don't want to edit the image further, click Export in the tool's interface. It will directly download the enhanced photo to your device's local storage.



Conclusion

An appealing visual is all about perfect contrasts, exposure, light, hues, saturation, color balance, and detail. Post-processing photos via advanced editing tools is mandatory nowadays, whether for a solo shoot for personal or professional pursuits or product, landscape, or merchandise photography. It will fine-tune photos' exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, saturation, and vibrance. While you can brighten a picture in PhotoShop and Lightroom and uplift your images to stunning visuals, be mindful that these are specially curated for professionals. Luckily, the CapCut low-light image enhancer tool sets a viable narrative regarding its single-tap action and usability. It can lighten your dull photos to bright and vibrant visuals in no time. Try CapCut low-light image enhancer today to add a new life to bland images!

FAQs

1. What is the quickest method to brighten an image in PhotoShop?
2. Using the Exposure adjustment feature is the quickest way to brighten image in PhotoShop. You can adjust the level by dragging the slider. To ease the process, the CapCut low-light image enhancer simplifies editing for novice users by giving one tap action to adjust the brightness in the photos. Simply import your photo, select the level of intensity of brightness, and then export it in one click!
3. Can I brighten a picture in PhotoShop without affecting its colors?
4. You can brighten photo PhotoShop with its Brightness/Contrast feature to undergo non-destructive tonal adjustment. It facilitates adjusting brightness without affecting original colors. Besides PhotoShop, CapCut low-light image enhancer can add clarity, brightness, contrast, and exposure by keeping photos' original details, texture, and features. Most importantly, it's easy and free, taking only a few clicks to brighten your image!
5. How can I sharpen details while brightening a photo in PhotoShop?
6. Sharpening photos in PhotoShop is easy with mask filters. You can use the unmask filter and adjust the level by dragging the slider. Meanwhile, CapCut offers a diverse AI-driven image upscaler tool to help you sharpen photos and enhance resolutions to UHD in a few clicks.