How to Lighten up an Image

How to lighten up a dark photo

This very simple tutorial is based on Photoshop CS4. It will work on a CS3 and CS2 version as well.

A very easy and effective way to lighten up a dark photo is to use Shadows/Highlights! You will be surprised about the impact!

This exercise will explain in easy 3 Steps how to lighten up a dark photo:

• Use a dark photo or use our sample photo
• Use the Shadows/Highlights (Image Adjustments)
• Save file as a jpg

Step 1

Either use a photo that you have and open it in Photoshop (Ctrl + O or File>Open)

Alternatively just use our sample photo. You can right click it and choose copy and when in Photoshop start a new document (Ctrl + N or File>New Document) and paste the image with Ctrl + V.

Step 2

To actually lighten the image up go to Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights and change the amounts of the Shadows (I chose 57%) and Highlights (I chose 9%). If you untick and tick the Preview box you can see the changes that will happen.
Okay the changes!

Step 3

Save the image as a jpg (Ctrl + S or File>Save).