How to Lighten a Dark Picture Significantly for Higher Clarity?

Have you ever taken a great shot but wondered how to lighten the dark photo? Lower luminance can take away the entire purpose of any photo. Therefore, the CapCut low-light image enhancer provides an efficient way to quickly brighten up your photos with its powerful AI engines and user-friendly interface.

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how to lighten a dark picture
CapCut
CapCut2024-02-07
0 min(s)

Pictures are a visual symphony of life, but sometimes they lack clarity. Learning how to lighten a dark picture can reignite the sentiments that it holds. Taking a great photograph that isn't bright enough can kill the entire essence of it. There are plenty of tools available online that offer efficient ways to lighten up any dark image for free. Let's dive in!

Table of content

What is brightness enhancement

In the world of photography, brightness enhancement is the process of increasing the perceived brightness or luminance of an image. In technical terms, this is achieved by changing the values of all pixels by a constant. For example, adding a positive constant to all image pixels will increase the overall image brightness and vice versa.

This can be done using various techniques, such as using a smart AI-powered image enhancer or tweaking around with individual parameters that affect the image luminance. These may include filters or adjustments of exposure, highlights, and contrast values.

One easy method to brighten up your dark photos is by using a powerful image enhancer such as the CapCut low-light image enhancer. It's a free online tool that can lighten up any dark photo with its smart AI algorithms.


A comparison of image brightness featuring a wooden house

How to increase brightness of image online in one click

CapCut low-light image enhancer is a free tool that enhances and brightens up your dark photographs. Whether it's a stunning night-sky image from your rooftop or a portrait for your Facebook display, CapCut low-light image enhancer has a powerful AI engine that can bring any dull photo to life.

Key features

CapCut low-light image enhancer is filled with rich image enhancement features that tune your dull images for better lighting and clarity.

  • Auto-brighten dark images: Its advanced AI engine makes lightening up your dark images a one-click process. So, none of your great shots turn out to be average due to low light conditions.
  • Improve image clarity and vibrance: It seamlessly enhances your photos by increasing their clarity and making the image colors vibrant. So you can part ways with dull photos and mild colors.
  • Multiple enhancement scales: The tool comes with 4 integrated brightness level presets that allow you to quickly change the level of lighting in your photo.
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Steps to brighten up your photos using CapCut low-light image enhancer

CapCut low-light image enhancer comes with an intuitive design, allowing you to efficiently brighten up your favorite photos. Here's how:

    Step
  1. Upload
  2. Upload your low-light photo directly from the local storage or import from CapCut cloud space, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
  3. 
    Upload the image to lighten the dark photo
  4. Step
  5. Generate
  6. Once the photo is uploaded, the engine will automatically start processing and make lighting enhancements.
  7. 
    The engine will start processing to lighten the dark photo
  8. After generation is complete, choose from 4 levels of color correction. "Level 1" is the least bright, and "Level 4" has the highest level of brightness.
  9. 
    4 different brightness levels to lighten the dark picture
  10. To edit your enhanced image further, click the "Edit more" option from the top-right to access advanced editing features such as the vast filters library. You can also finetune your image further by adjusting the opacity, blend, saturation, and other relevant parameters.
  11. 
    Advanced editing features to further lighten a dark photo
  12. Step
  13. Export

Finally, export your photo to the local storage by tapping the blue "Export" icon from the top right.


Export to local storage after you lighten the dark photo

Lighten a dark picture by adding filters

Filters provide an efficient solution to your dark photos as they diversify the color range and improve the overall vibrance of your photo. Especially if you don't trust AI-powered tools with image enhancement and want more control over your photos, you can use the CapCut online photo editor to access a wide range of filters.

    Step
  1. Upload
  2. Upload the photo from local storage or import one directly from Google Drive, Dropbox, or CapCut space. Additionally, you can import a photo by scanning the QR code from your phone's camera.
  3. 
    Upload the image to lighten the dark photo
  4. Step
  5. Edit
  6. From the right toolbar, click on the "Filters" tab to access a wide collection of filters. Choose a filter that best suits your lighting preferences.
  7. 
    Use filters to lighten a dark photo
  8. Adjust the intensity of the chosen filter. A 100 value on the slider represents the highest intensity.
  9. 
    Change filter intensity to lighten a dark photo
  10. Step
  11. Export

Tap on the "Export" icon and change the image format, size, and quality before downloading your photo to the local storage. You can also copy the image as PNG.


Export the image after you lighten the dark picture

Lighten a dark photo by adjusting exposure

CapCut online photo editor comes with a dedicated exposure slider that lets you change the exposure value for your image. Exposure is the amount of light that reaches your camera's sensor. A higher exposure value will make your image brighter and vice versa. However, overexposure can overexpose the highlights in an image.

From the right toolbar, tap on "Adjust" and find the exposure slider under the "Light" tab. Adjust the exposure slider to achieve the right amount of luminance in your photos.


Use exposure to lighten a dark picture

Lighten dark pictures by adjusting brightness

CapCut online photo editor comes with a high-precision brightness adjustment slider that allows you to increase the brightness of your dark photos. The higher the value on the brightness slider, the brighter your photo will be.

From the "Adjust" tab in the right toolbar, access the brightness slider under the "Light" section. Adjust the brightness slider according to your preferred level and notice the change in the luminance of your image in real-time.


Change brightness to lighten a dark photo

Lighten a dark picture by adjusting contrast

Adjusting the contrast can significantly increase the luminance of your photos. CapCut online photo editor comes with an integrated contrast adjustment slider that allows you to tweak the contrast levels of your image for additional light.

From the right toolbar, tap on the "Adjust" option to access the contrast slider under the "Light" section. Adjust the contrast slider until you achieve an optimum brightness level for your photo.


Use contrast slider to lighten a dark picture

Lighten a dark picture by adjusting highlights

CapCut online photo editor allows you to precisely adjust the highlights in your photos. Highlights are the lightest elements in the image. Therefore, increasing the highlight value in an image further brightens up the lighter elements.

To access the highlights slider, tap on the "Adjust" option from the right toolbar and find the highlight slider under the "Light" section. Adjust the slider until you achieve the preferred level of luminance in your photo.


Change highlights to lighten a dark picture

Lighten dark pictures by adjusting shadow

CapCut online photo editor has a built-in shadow adjustment slider that allows you to optimize the image brightness by tweaking its shadows. Shadows are the darkest elements in the image. Hence, increasing the slider value will make your image brighter by illuminating the darker parts.

From the right toolbar, click on the "Adjust" tab and tweak the shadow slider until an optimum brightness level is achieved.


Use the shadow slider to lighten a dark photo

Lighten a dark picture by adjusting the Shine slider

Shine is the glow in a picture. With higher shine values, the pictures look brighter as they have a higher glow. CapCut online photo editor comes with an integrated shine slider that makes your photos more vibrant and increases their brightness.

Form the "Adjust" tab on the right toolbar, and change the shine adjustment slider values to increase the glow of your image and improve its brightness.


Change shine to lighten a dark picture

Increase photo brightness by adjusting the Fade slider

Fade adds an additional white layer to the image with minimal opacity. This increases the brightness of your photo. The CapCut online photo editor comes with a dedicated fade slider that allows you to tweak around with different fade values to achieve the desired brightness.

To access the fade slider, tap on the "Adjust" tab from the right toolbar and find the fade slider under the "Light" section. Change the fade values to increase the image brightness. Make sure you don't set extremely high values, as it will decrease the image clarity.


Change the fade values to lighten a dark photo

Conclusion

Photographs play a crucial role in the modern-day world of social media. They allow you to convey ideas, memories, and other forms of content, including entertainment. Therefore, it's crucial that the photos you take have maximum detail and clarity. Whether you use photographs for work or you are passionate about photography, luminance is a deciding factor in the overall outlook of your photos. This is where tools such as the CapCut low-light image enhancer come in handy. It's an AI-powered tool that's extremely fast, available online, and completely free to lighten up an unlimited number of pictures.

FAQs

  1. Can you lighten old dark pictures?
  2. Yes. Use CapCut low-light image enhancer to instantly lighten up any old dark picture for free. It's a fast and easy method as this tool has a powerful AI engine that gives great results in finetuning your photos. If your photos have taken some sort of physical or digital distortion due to daily wear and tear, you can first restore them using CapCut old photo restoration and then lighten them up with the low-light image enhancer.
  3. How to lighten dark photos on an iPhone?
  4. On an iPhone, you can choose from hundreds of photo enhancers available in the app store. However, the CapCut mobile app provides a safe and efficient way to edit your dark photos for a higher brightness and clarity. Simply upload your dark photo to the CapCut mobile app from your iPhone gallery, change the brightness, exposure, highlights, and other parameter sliders until you achieve the desired image luminance, finally export the image to local storage, or directly share it to social media.
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