How to adjust brightness, contrast and colours, or make a photo black and white

Steps

1. Open the Adjust colours and filters tool and drop in your pictures.
2. Move the Brightness, Contrast and Colour strength sliders, or choose a filter such as Black and white.
3. Check the live preview, and use Reset if you want to start again.
4. Press Apply and download the files, or all of them as a ZIP.

What each control does

Brightness makes everything lighter or darker. Contrast pushes light and dark further apart or closer together. Colour strength dials the colours up, or down to grey, and the filters give black and white, sepia (a warm old-photo brown) or a negative.

Brightness and contrast are applied first, then colour strength, then the filter. Move them in small steps, because big changes flatten or blow out detail.

Batches and file types

The same changes are applied to every picture you add, so a whole folder can be turned black and white at once. The preview shows the first picture.

Transparent areas of a PNG stay transparent. Each picture is saved in its own format, and JPG and WebP are saved again at high quality.

Tips

Change one slider at a time and watch the preview. It is easy to push brightness and contrast together until detail is lost in the lightest and darkest parts.

For a black and white photo with more punch, choose Black and white, then add a little contrast. For an old-photo look, sepia with slightly lower brightness works well.