Brightness and contrast — Troubleshooting

Worked example

Flat white highlights, a grey washed-out look or odd colours after adjusting usually mean Brightness, Saturation or Warmth went too far.

If highlights lose all detail, the Brightness value is too high or Highlights is positive. A 3000 × 2000 px photo pushed to Brightness 170 will burn any area that was already near white. Go back to 120 to 135 and use Shadows to lift the dark parts instead; clipped pixels cannot be recovered by lowering the slider afterwards in another export, only by starting again from the original.

If the image looks grey and milky after brightening, the blacks were lifted along with everything else. Add Contrast of 8 to 15 points, or lower Brightness a little. Raising Brightness and Contrast together is often the cleaner fix for a flat photo than either one alone.

If skin or ceramics look orange or plasticky, Saturation or Warmth is too high. Bring Saturation back to 100 to 115 and Warmth to within plus or minus 15, then check a neutral object such as a white plate. A strong Sepia or Grayscale value will also override colour entirely, so make sure both are 0 unless you want that style.

If the exported file does not match the preview, you may be comparing it on a screen with a different brightness or colour setting, or after another program changed it. Open both files in the same viewer, and use the press-and-hold compare button in the tool to confirm that the original is what you started with.

Underexposed photograph

Adjusted image; highlights inspected

Clipped highlights cannot be rescued in a second pass, so restart from the original file when you need to undo them.