Exposure Explained: Brightness, Contrast, Highlights and Shadows

Most photo problems come down to light: too dark, too bright, too flat, too harsh. Understanding four basic controls gives you the power to fix most of them.

Brightness (or exposure)

Brightness moves the overall lightness of the whole picture up or down. It is the simplest tool and often the first one you'll use. A small increase can rescue an underexposed shot, but pushing it too far can wash out the bright parts.

Contrast

Contrast is the difference between light and dark areas. More contrast makes bright areas brighter and dark areas darker, giving punch and depth. Less contrast makes the image softer and flatter.

• Flat, hazy photos benefit from a gentle boost in contrast.
• Harsh, high-contrast scenes, such as noon sun, may benefit from reducing contrast.

Highlights

Highlights are the brightest parts of the image, such as the sky or a white shirt. Reducing highlights brings back detail in clouds and bright surfaces.

Shadows

Shadows are the darkest parts. Lifting shadows reveals detail in dark areas, such as faces in backlit portraits, but lifting too much causes a flat look and reveals noise, the grainy speckles in darker parts of photos.

Blown highlights and crushed blacks

When a bright area is pure white with no detail, it's "clipped" or "blown out". When a dark area is pure black with no detail, it's "crushed". Once information is lost, editing can't fully restore it, which is why it helps to get exposure right when shooting. If your phone allows, tap the bright part of the screen to lower the exposure before shooting.

A simple order for adjusting

1. Adjust overall brightness so the picture looks about right.
2. Recover highlights if any bright areas look burnt.
3. Lift shadows if dark areas hide detail.
4. Add contrast to restore punch.
5. Check the whole image at normal size, not just zoomed in.

Backlit subjects

A person in front of a bright window or sky usually appears dark. Lift shadows and raise brightness slightly, keeping an eye on the background. Or, if you're shooting, expose for the face.

Don't trust a single screen

Screen brightness varies. Compare your edit on a second device, or at a different brightness, to make sure it isn't too dark or too light.

Common mistakes

• Making everything brighter until the sky is white.
• Lifting shadows so much that the photo looks flat and noisy.
• Editing in a dark room with the screen at maximum brightness.

Practice

Take a photo with a bright window and a dark room. Try each adjustment on its own, then together, and notice how each one behaves.

Adjust brightness, contrast and more with Cinexa →