Can I lighten a photo that is too dark?

[pawith]

Hi..Im new to this..loving it so far but can I lighten a photo which is too dark? How?

[Crazy Man Dan]

After you've opened up the image in Paint.NET, go under the Layers menu. Under the Adjustments pop-out, there's an option called "Brightness / Contrast." That'll help you lighten the image.

The Brightness slider controls overall brightness of the image, and the contrast slider changes the difference between the brightness of the lightest and darkest pixels. In general, if you only raise the brightness, you'll get an image that looks washed out. If you raise the brightness, it usually looks more natural if you raise the contrast a little as well.

Edit:

You could also use the Levels or Curves tools to adjust the image, but those are a little more advanced. (Even I'm not entirely sure how Levels works :wink:. I'll need to mess around a bit.)

[Player1]

Try layers-->adjustments-->auto level, that sets brightnes automatically, if you are not satisfyied, you can adjust it manually.