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Brightness and Contrast

You can often improve digital images by adjusting the brightness and contrast settings in an photo editing program.

Brightness controls the amount of lightness or darkness in an image. (In many photo editing program, the brightness control is represented by a sun icon.)

Contrast controls the difference between light and dark in the image. A low contrast image appears "grayish" or foggy. A high contrast image looks almost poster like. (In many photo editing programs, the contrast control is represented by a half black, half white icon.)

There are many different photo editing programs available. Most cameras and scanners come with software that helps improve your digital photos. The programs range from very basic and easy-to-use to extremely powerful and expensive programs.

Some examples include:

PhotoDeluxe
PhotoShop Elements
Photoshop
Paint Shop Pro
MGI PhotoSuite
PhotoStudio
Picture It!
PhotoEditor
Image Composer
Irfanview

Try this:

First, find any programs already installed on your computer. (Many users already have software to handle most basic tasks.) It may be a program that came with your scanner or camera.

Use the File menu to open the picture. (Note that simply double-clicking on the icon in the picture folder may not open the picture in the desired program.)

Find the settings for brightness and contrast. These are generally found together in a menu. The name of the menu is different in different software. It may be called Image, Adjust, Settings, Enhance, or something similar.

Adjust the image by changing the numbers or dragging the slider up or down. When the image looks good, click the OK button. Most photos are improved with only minimal adjustments - sometimes as little as 7 or 8 (on a scale of 100). A common mistake by beginners is over adjusting an image.

BEFORE

AFTER

Above are the two images. On the left is the flower before the image was adjusted. You can see the image is rather "hazy" or "cloudy" looking. The black in the background is not a true, rich black. The brightness and contrast of the image needs to be adjusted.

The box at left shows the changes made to the image. As you can see, the brightness was lessened by 10 and the contrast was increased by 16. These are relatively small amounts.

Above right is the final image. The blacks are blacker and the image no longer has a hazy look.

The image on the right has the contrast set too high. You can see that the the whites are too white and the flower is overall washed out.