How do I brighten a dark photo?

Raise the brightness slider, then add a little contrast so it doesn't look washed out. This tool applies the changes live in your browser without uploading. For very dark or damaged photos, AI restoration recovers detail brightness alone can't.

What's the difference between brightness and contrast?

Brightness lifts or lowers the whole image evenly; contrast increases the difference between lights and darks, adding punch. Saturation controls how vivid the colors are. Small adjustments to all three usually look best.

Free Tool · No upload · Private

Adjust Brightness

Fix a dark, dull, or flat photo with live brightness, contrast, and saturation sliders — right in your browser. Never uploaded.

☀️Choose a photoAdjusted in your browser — never uploaded

Old photo faded or damaged? Manual sliders can only do so much — our AI photo restoration tool → repairs and restores automatically.

Adjusting photos the right way

Most photos improve with small nudges: a touch more brightness to open up shadows, a little contrast for punch, and modest saturation so colors feel alive without turning cartoonish. Big moves tend to look artificial — subtlety reads as professional.

Sliders adjust the pixels you already have. They can't recover detail that a dark, faded, or damaged photo never captured — that's where AI restoration goes further, reconstructing what manual adjustments can only stretch.

Faded or damaged beyond a slider?

AI restoration repairs fading, scratches, and blur — and colorizes black-and-white — automatically.

Try AI Photo Restoration →