Photoshop Elements: Brighten the photo properly - how it works
If a photo is too dark for you, you can lighten it slightly with Photoshop Elements. We show you different methods.
Lighten dark photo with shadows and highlights in Photoshop Elements
One method is to lighten dark images by adjusting shadows and highlights.
- Open the photo in Photoshop Elements.
- Call up the menu item "Depths / Highlights" under "Revise"> "Adjust lighting".
- In the dialog window, you can now edit the dark areas using the "Lighten depths" slider. With "Darken Lights" you can adjust the bright areas of the picture, such as the sky. Increase the "midtone contrast" a little to achieve a balanced result.
Lighten the photo in Photoshop Elements using tonal correction
Another way also leads to the brightening of the picture. Since the entire photo is lightened in this way, the contrast disappears and the result is not as good as in the previous procedure.
- Navigate to Revise> Adjust Lighting> Levels
- Below the graph you will see three controls. Slide the middle slider a little to the left until the desired brightness is reached.
Layer multiplication for photo correction with PS Elements
The easiest way to lighten photos that are too dark with Photoshop Elements is by layer multiplication.
- To be able to use this setting, you must first switch to expert mode on the upper bar.
- Now duplicate the layer via the menu "Layer -> Duplicate Layer". On the right side of the screen you will now see the layer window with the original layer and the copy.
- Select the layer copy and change the layer mode for this layer from "Normal" to "Multiply Negative". This makes the picture much brighter.
- You can repeat steps 2 and 3 until the result is what you want.
