STEP 1. Increase Brightness
Usually, your photo is darker than you think. As I explained in “Chapter 2. -How To Improve Your Photo” , you need to boost up the average brightness of your photo. BRIGHTNESS function can increase the average brightness. It increase or decrease brightness data in all pixels so you can do it easily,
I will boost up the brightness of this photo using BRIGHTNESS function.
Before increasing the BRIGHTNESS function, please look over your photo and recognize what you want to improve and also check the brightest area. In this photo, what I want to improve is the young model in the foreground. Around the clouds is the brightest area.
You need to increase the brightness of what you want to improve as much as you can
Let us increase the BRIGHTNESS function until the model’s face can get enough brightness as much as possible.
I increased the value of BRIGHTNESS function up to 100. I wanted to increase more but this is the limit.
As you increase the BRIGHTNESS function, all of the areas become brighter than the original and a bit whitish. First, you need to focus just on getting enough brightness for your target area as much as you can.
Let us compare the original photo and improved photo.
The dark, middle and bright areas are boosted up and it is totally brighter than the original. The BRIGHTNESS function can either increase or decrease the brightness of entire photo. In other words, it will change the average brightness of your photo.
As you increase the brightness of your photos using BRIGHTNESS function, firstly, brightest area reached the maximum brightness(100%) one after the other and it will be too bright. You just need to adjust the brightness of the brightest area so as not to loose the details.
The goal to adjust brightness is to get more brightness of what you want to improve.
Let us proceed to the next step.