Easy Tips To Brighten a Dark Photo Using Picasa

Easy Tips To Brighten a Dark Photo Using Picasa

I’m going to show you some tips to get from the original darker picture to the cleaner bright picture using only Picasa.

Picasa is a super easy free photo editing program from Google. I use it often in my photo editing projects for the blog. It comes in handy to brighten images, crop, add text, and add some simple effects.

easytipstobrightenadarkphoto

The Beginning Image

Lou post swim session. There also may have been some form of junk food from the looks of the blue stuff on her mouth.

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The first I do usually is do an auto correct on the contrast. In Picasa you will find this button on the tool screen. It is the middle of the second row. There is also a slider bar labeled Fill Light on this panel. It may just be my imagination but I think this one works differently than the Fill Light in the Tuning Panel. I usually set it to right about the middle line.

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The next panel I go to is the Tuning Panel. It’s the one right beside the tools. This panel has the Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows, and Color Temp slider settings. These I use to lighten the image even more. There really isn’t a certain setting here just move them till you like the result.

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Now for that blue spot… Retouch in the tools section will fix that right up. Just select your blemish and then move the cursor to as close to the blemish as possible where it makes the spot blend in.

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Leaving me with this much brighter shot.

Although there is not one thing I can do about the messy hair.

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I could leave it like this but I thought I would show you a few other effects you can do in Picasa.

Such as the Glow effect. I don’t use this often because I feel it takes away some details but it does great for portrait shots.

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This is the Orton-ish effect. I used to love this effect and used it a lot before I got my DSLR camera. It will sometimes make a slightly fuzzy picture look great.

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Adding a Vignette is also super easy.

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49 thoughts on “Easy Tips To Brighten a Dark Photo Using Picasa”

  1. I def need to change the way I take and edit my pictures! I always use canva and picmonkey but will have to try out picasa too!

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