How to Adjust a Photo
Most photographs that look slightly wrong are not badly composed — they are just badly exposed, a touch flat, or lit with the wrong colour of light. Five sliders fix the overwhelming majority of those problems. This tool gives you exactly those five, with a live preview and a hold-to-compare button, and exports at your original resolution with no watermark.
Upload your photo
It is loaded straight into the page and never uploaded to a server.
Adjust with live preview
Start with a preset if you like, then fine-tune. Hold the compare button at any point to see the original.
Export at full resolution
The preview is scaled to fit your screen, but the export processes every original pixel.
What Each Slider Actually Does
Exposure and brightnesssound identical and are not. Exposure behaves like changing the camera setting — it multiplies the light across the image, so bright areas move further than dark ones. Brightness shifts every tone by the same amount. For a photo that is simply too dark, reach for exposure first; it keeps shadows from going flat and grey.
Contrastpushes tones away from mid-grey, deepening shadows and brightening highlights. It is the single most effective fix for a photo that looks lifeless, but it is easy to overdo — past a certain point you are simply destroying detail at both ends of the range that cannot be recovered.
Saturation increases colour intensity around the pixel's luminance, which is why it does not blow out brightness as it goes up. And temperature is the one people underuse: photos shot under indoor bulbs come out orange, and photos in shade come out blue. Correcting temperature often fixes a picture that looked wrong in a way you could not name.
A Sensible Order to Work In
Fix exposure first
Get the overall brightness right before anything else. Every other adjustment builds on it, so correcting it later means redoing your work.
Then correct the colour cast
Temperature next. A photo with an orange or blue cast will fight every other change you make until the white balance looks natural.
Contrast third
Once the tones and colour are honest, add contrast to give the image structure. Small amounts go a long way.
Saturation last, and lightly
Boosting colour is the most tempting slider and the easiest to overdo. Push it until it looks right, then pull it back a little - it almost always looks better.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I adjust a photo online for free?
Upload it, move the sliders with the live preview, and export. Free, no signup, no watermark and no resolution limit.
What is the difference between exposure and brightness?
Exposure multiplies the light like a camera setting, so bright areas move more than dark ones. Brightness shifts every tone equally. For a dark photo, exposure usually looks more natural.
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. Every adjustment is applied on a canvas inside your browser. Your photo is never uploaded, stored or seen by anyone.
Does it reduce the resolution?
No. The preview is scaled to fit your screen, but the export processes every original pixel at full resolution.
Why does my photo look orange or blue?
Indoor bulbs cast warm orange light and shade casts cool blue. The temperature slider corrects this, which often fixes a photo that looked wrong in a way you could not identify.
How much contrast is too much?
Once shadows turn to solid black or highlights to pure white, you are destroying detail that cannot be recovered. Increase it until the image has structure, then stop.
Can I compare with the original?
Yes. Hold the compare button and the preview reverts to your untouched photo for as long as you hold it.
Which format should I export?
JPG for photographs - much smaller with no visible difference. PNG if you need lossless quality or transparency. WebP is a good modern middle ground.
Will this fix a blurry photo?
No, that is a different problem. Use our sharpen tool, which applies an unsharp mask - though genuine motion blur cannot be fully recovered by any tool.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes. Open this page in Safari or Chrome, pick a photo from your gallery, and adjust it with the same live preview.
Does adjusting strip my photo's metadata?
Yes, as a side effect of re-encoding. If you specifically want to remove location and camera data, our metadata remover does that deliberately.
Is this image adjustment tool really free?
Completely free, with no limits, no watermark, no signup and no premium wall. Everything runs in your browser.
Last updated: July 19, 2026 · FlipMyFormat Image Adjuster
Written and maintained by the FlipMyFormat team