Three ways to digitally brighten a dark image using Adobe PhotoshopWritten by: Jenny | In this tutorial, you will learn how to digitally brighten a dark photograph with Adobe Photoshop using three different methods. By the way, the photograph used is a very low-quality photograph of my bedroom.

In this tutorial you will learn how to digitally brighten a dark photograph using Adobe Photoshop using one of two methods. I’ll be brightening the image below.

Method 1

Method 1-Easy

This first method is quick to use and easy to learn; so it is perfect for some casual touch-ups or for beginners to Adobe Photoshop. This method uses ‘screen layers’.

First, open up your original ‘dark’ image up in Photoshop. Copy this image and then create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer..) and press OK to the window shown to you. Paste the image into your new layer. Now, in the layer window choose the option ‘screen’ in the selection box below the tab saying ‘Layer’. To bring up the layer window got to ‘Window’ and then make sure the ‘Layer’ option is checked; if not, check it. Your image should now be brighter.



To make the image even brighter, repeat the process above from ‘copy this image…’. Do this as many times as you see fit; every time you repeat it the brighter the image gets.



Although this method is very quick and easy, it allows very little control over the amount of brightness (since it is set in blocks) and where the brightness is applied.

Method 2

This method is almost as quick and easy as method one!

First in the layer window (Window > Layer) click the buttton on the bottom which looks like a circle with one half in black.



Now choose ‘Brightness/Contrast’ in the list that pops up. You’ll presented with this window below and a new ‘brightness’ layer which you should not delete.



Since you haven’t done anything to the brightness or contrast of the image yet, 0 is the default setting. First make your image brighter by moving the slider to the right or by typing in a number. You can see that you image starts to look a little misty as it gets brighter, to combat this toggle the contrast of the image by doing the same. This should make it less misty. When you are done playing with the slides, click OK:

Method 3

This method is the most difficult of all the techniques and can be a little tricky to grasp the concept of but when understood allows plenty of control over your settings.

With the image open in Photoshop, go to the half-black/half-white circle on the bottom of the layers window (Window > Layer) and click it, choose on the opened menu ‘Curves…’





How the curve works is that, you set a point on the line by clicking on it and that point corresponds to a certain level of shading in your image. So if you click on a point close to the left, the bottom gradient tells you that it will control all the dark parts of you image. Move the points you’ve clicked on up and down and it will make the dark selected parts of your image as dark or as light to match the y-axis.

You can play around with the curve for awhile and then press OK to get something similar to the below:



This method always works well but it works better on some image than others. It works best on images with larger tonal contrasts such as a very dark shadow, a mid-tone subject and a very light background.



   

| Written by: Jenny | Added: Nov 10 2009 | Last Modified: Jan 23 2010 | Views: 1,604 | (Log in to rate) |

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