You can use the lighting tool to adjust tone levels in an image that are too dark or too light, without affecting other areas of the photo. Tone level is the average brightness of a pixel and its surrounding pixels.
You can also simultaneously lighten areas that are too dark, and darken areas that are too bright. Examples would be a back-lit photo of a person silhouetted against a bright background like the sea, or a window. In fact, most photos taken on a dull day, or with a flash, can be improved in various ways with fine adjustments using the lighting tool.
You can save your settings as a preset for future use.
To Adjust Lighting in Your Image:
In the Lighting group, adjust the lighting as described below.
Basic is for very quick and easy adjustments using just three sliders. You can also click directly on an area of the image to generate automatic settings optimal for that area (usually the subject of the photo).
Basic Lighting Options
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Shadows |
Drag the slider to the right to brighten or drag the slider to the left to darken the shadows. |
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Midtones |
Drag the slider to the right to brighten or drag the slider to the left to darken midtones. |
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Highlights |
Drag the slider to the right to brighten or drag the slider to the left to darken highlights. |
Light EQ works like a sound equalizer but with light. You can adjust the brightness and contrast of different tone bands (areas of relative brightness or darkness) of the image – independently – using a slider for each tone band. A graph shows the amount of brightening or darkening applied throughout the tonal range. The gray areas in the graph are suggested boundaries for adjustment to avoid clipping and loss of detail, and turn red to indicate where you have adjusted the sliders far enough to cause clipping.
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Brighten sliders (top) |
Drag the sliders up to increase the brightening in each tonal band. The sliders on the left affect dark tones. The sliders on the right affect bright tones. Moving a slider changes the amount of brightening only in that particular tonal band in the image. You can also type a number into the number boxes and increment them slowly to make precise adjustments. |
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Darken sliders (bottom) |
Drag the sliders down to increase the darkening in each tonal band. The sliders on the left affect dark tones. The sliders on the right affect bright tones. Moving a slider changes the amount of darkening only in that particular tonal band in the image. You can also type a number into the number boxes and increment them slowly to make precise adjustments. |
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Graph |
The graph indicates the amount of brightening and darkening applied throughout the tone range of the image. The portion of the graph above the horizontal axis corresponds to brightening, while the portion of the graph below the horizontal axis corresponds to darkening. When both brightening and darkening are applied within the same tonal band, contrast is increased. The area between the top of the brightening graph and the bottom of the darkening graph indicates the relative increase of contrast throughout the tone range of the image. You can click on the graph or on the image and drag the double-pointed arrow up or down to brighten or darken. |
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# tone bands |
Drag the slider on each tonal band to adjust areas of the curve. You can choose to display 2, 3, 5, 7 or 9 tone band sliders. |
Advanced gives you ultimate control of the brightness and contrast in an image. Adjustment curves can be constructed using four sliders, and you can manually adjust the curves by clicking and dragging within the graph area or on the image itself.
The top half of the graph corresponds to brightening, and the bottom half corresponds to darkening. Tone levels of the shadows are represented on the left, midtones in the middle, and highlights on the right.
The light gray in the graph shows the amount of brightening or darkening applied throughout the image. The dark gray areas in the graph are suggested boundaries for adjustment, and turn red to indicate where you have adjusted far enough to cause a loss in detail. When the cursor is over the image, the two vertical yellow lines correspond to the lower and upper bounds of the tone level of the area under the cursor and indicate the center of adjustment.
Advanced Options
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Area |
Action |
Result |
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Sliders |
Drag Brightening slider |
To the right: Increases the light applied to the darker areas. To the left: Applies brightening more uniformly to all areas of the image. |
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Drag Darkening slider |
To the right: Increases the darkening applied to the brighter areas of the image. To the left: Applies the darkening more uniformly to all areas of the image. |
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Drag Amplitude slider (Brighten) |
To the right: Increases the intensity of the brightening across all areas of the image. The height of the curve increases. To the left: Reduces the intensity of the brightening and the height of the curve. If the Amplitude slider is 0: No brightening is applied. If the Amplitude is 100 - 200: Proportional amount of clipping increases. In most cases, 110 is the right amount of amplitude. For images with fine detail in the highlights, decreasing brighten amplitude preserves the detail. In most cases it is not necessary to adjust amplitude. |
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Drag Amplitude slider (Darken) |
To the right: Increases the intensity of the darkening across all areas of the image. The height of the bottom orange curve increases. To the left: Reduces the intensity of the darkening and the height of the curve. |
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On Graph |
Drag the graph (top) |
The graph changes as you click and drag up on the graph itself. The graph represents the brighten adjustments you are making. The gray graph represents the maximum amount you can drag the graph before clipping (pink) begins. The height of the graph represents the level of brightening applied at each tone level. (Tone moves from black on left to white on the right.) When you make direct brightening or darkening adjustments on the graph or image, the corresponding Brighten or Darken Amplitude slider changes to indicate the current curve amplitude. (An amplitude of 100 is the maximum amplitude a curve can have without causing clipping.) |
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Drag the graph (bottom) |
The graph changes as you OPTION + drag down on the graph itself. The graph represents the darken adjustments you are making. The gray graph represents the maximum amount you can drag the graph before clipping (pink) begins. |