Brightening without turning it into the sun

Brightening Without Turning It Into the Sun

Okay. Last time we talked about why the projector photo was too dark, and how one exposure slider fixed a whole classroom's worth of squinting. Today we're going the other direction. Today we're talking about the opposite mistake, which is honestly the more common one once people figure out that slider exists.

Here's what happens. You brighten a photo, it looks better, so you think "great, more of that." You drag the slider further. Now the sky's gone white, your friend's face has lost its shape, and the whole thing looks like it's being lit from inside. That's overexposing, and it's an easy trap because the first little bit of brightening feels so good.

I know this one from personal experience. My very first exposure fix was a photo of a cedar board in the garage, bad light, looked flat and gray. I brightened it, and brightened it some more, and honestly by the end it looked like the surface of the sun. I walked away pleased with myself. Came back an hour later and about fell over. It was not a photo of wood anymore. It was a photo of a glowing rectangle.

So here's the rule I use now, and it's not really a rule, it's just what works: make one adjustment, then close the app and walk away for a minute. Come back with fresh eyes. Your eyes get tired staring at a screen and they'll let you keep dragging a slider past where you should've stopped. A break resets that.

The actual steps

1. Open your photo and find the exposure or brightness slider. Different apps call it different things, but it's usually the first one in the list, right where you found it last lesson for the dark projector fix.

1. Nudge it up in small amounts. Don't drag to the middle of the scale and see what happens. Move it a little, stop, look.

1. Watch the brightest part of the photo, not the darkest. People tend to watch the shadows fill in and think "good, better," while the sky or the window behind them is already blowing out to pure white. Once a part of a photo goes solid white, there's no detail left there and you can't get it back by fixing anything else. Keep an eye on that.

1. Stop when it looks like a normal photo of a real place, not a photo with a spotlight. That's the whole test. Does it look like something someone would have actually seen with their own eyes? If it looks like it's radiating, you've gone too far.

1. Close the app. Actually close it, or at least switch to something else for a minute. Then open it back up and look again. This is the same move from the undo lesson: undo isn't failure, it's the method. If it looks too bright with fresh eyes, back the slider off. That's not you messing up, that's the process working exactly like it's supposed to.

Here's my actual opinion on this, and I'll flag it as opinion because it is one: most photos need less editing than people give them. The instinct when you find a slider is to really use it. But restraint is what makes an edit look like someone fixed the photo on purpose, and overdoing it is what makes it look like someone just discovered they had sliders. A little brightening, applied carefully, reads as "this person knows what they're doing." A lot of brightening reads as "this person found a new toy." I'd rather you undercook it a little than turn every photo into high noon.

A quick honest story about getting pulled off track by this

I mentioned Debra wanted a cedar bench built for the ward entryway. One morning I was out in the garage working on it, took a photo of the half-finished thing to send her as a progress update, and before sending it I brightened up the shop light because the garage bulbs make everything look kind of yellow and sad. Made it look great. Sent it off.

She texted back, "looks great, when's it DONE ❤️."

I had brightened the photo more than I had finished the bench. That's the trap right there. A good edit can make something look further along than it actually is, and if you're not careful you start believing your own photo instead of looking at the actual project. I laughed about it, and then I felt a little convicted, and then I went back out and actually worked on the bench instead of the picture of it.

That's a decent way to think about brightening in general. It's a real fix for a real problem, dark photos are genuinely hard to look at, but it's not magic and it's not a substitute for the thing actually being good. Fix the light. Don't fix the light so hard the photo starts lying to you.

Before next time

Grab one of your darker photos from the pile you started a few lessons back, and practice going too far on purpose, just once. Brighten it until it looks silly, then back it off with fresh eyes until it looks normal again. It's a good way to learn where the edge is. 😊