How to Adjust Brightness, Contrast and Color of a Photo

To adjust a photo's brightness, contrast or color, open Adjust & Filters, drop in your image, and drag the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue sliders until it looks right. Add Grayscale, Sepia or Blur, flip on Invert for a negative, then download — every adjustment happens in your browser, with nothing uploaded.

What this tool actually does

Adjust & Filters applies eight effects to your image in a single pass: Brightness (0–200%, default 100%), Contrast (0–200%, default 100%), Saturation (0–300%, default 100%), Hue rotation (0–360°, default 0°), Grayscale (0–100%, default 0%), Sepia (0–100%, default 0%), Blur (0–20px in 0.5px steps, default 0px), and an Invert toggle (off by default). At the defaults, every slider sits at its neutral value, so the output is visually identical to the original — nothing changes until you move something.

Under the hood, the tool builds one native browser filter string from all eight values and draws your image through it once, in this exact, fixed order: brightness → contrast → saturate → hue-rotate → grayscale → sepia → blur → invert. That order isn't something you control by the order you drag sliders — it's baked into the tool. The practical effect is that Invert is always applied last, after every other adjustment, so turning it on gives you the negative of whatever the other sliders already produced, not the negative of your original photo with the other effects layered on top of that.

Blur is measured in fixed pixels, not a percentage of the image like the Size setting on the Watermark Image tool. A 6px blur looks strong on a 400px thumbnail and barely noticeable on a 4,000px photo, since the blur radius doesn't scale with resolution.

Format defaults to "Same as original," or you can force PNG, JPG or WebP. There's no separate quality slider here (unlike Compress Image or Convert Image Format) — JPG and WebP exports are always encoded at a fixed 92% quality. Export as JPG and any transparency in the source gets filled with white, since JPG has no alpha channel.

How to adjust a photo with Toolbench

1. Open Adjust & Filters.
2. Drop in a photo, paste one from your clipboard, or click to browse. PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF and SVG all work.
3. Drag Brightness (0–200%) and Contrast (0–200%) to fix an under- or over-exposed shot.
4. Drag Saturation (0–300%) to make colors more vivid, or pull it toward 0% to mute them.
5. Drag Hue (0–360°) to rotate every color around the color wheel — useful for creative color shifts.
6. Add Grayscale (0–100%) for a partial or full black-and-white look, or Sepia (0–100%) for a warm vintage tint.
7. Add Blur (0–20px) for a soft-focus effect, and flip Invert on for a photo-negative look.
8. Choose a Format, or leave it as "Same as original."
9. Compare the Original and Result panels side by side, then ↓ Download — or sign in first to ＋ Save to gallery.

Worked example

Start from the defaults — Brightness 100%, Contrast 100%, Saturation 100%, Hue 0°, Grayscale 0%, Sepia 0%, Blur 0px, Invert off. Every value is neutral, so the tool's filter evaluates to brightness(100%) contrast(100%) saturate(100%) hue-rotate(0deg) grayscale(0%) sepia(0%) blur(0px) invert(0) — an identity transform. The downloaded image looks exactly like the original (re-encoded, and re-compressed if you switch to JPG or WebP).

Now raise Grayscale to 100% and leave everything else at its default. The image desaturates completely to black and white — but because Grayscale is a 0–100% slider rather than an on/off toggle, you can stop partway. Set it to 40% instead for a muted, editorial look that keeps a hint of the original color rather than removing it entirely.

Next, turn Invert on with Hue still at 0° and everything else default. Because invert runs last in the filter chain, this produces a straightforward photo negative — light areas become dark and colors flip to their complements. If you first rotate Hue to, say, 180° and then turn Invert on, the hue shift happens to the original colors before the invert flips the result, so the final colors are not simply "original colors inverted" — they're "hue-shifted colors inverted." The two effects compose in that order every time, regardless of which slider you touched first.

Options at a glance

Setting	Range	Default	What it does
Brightness	0–200%	100%	Scales how light or dark the image is
Contrast	0–200%	100%	Spreads or compresses the gap between light and dark areas
Saturation	0–300%	100%	Boosts or mutes color intensity
Hue	0–360°	0°	Rotates every color around the color wheel
Grayscale	0–100%	0%	Desaturates toward black and white
Sepia	0–100%	0%	Tints toward a warm vintage brown
Blur	0–20px	0px	Softens the image by a fixed pixel radius
Invert	on/off	off	Produces a negative of everything else already applied

Tips and common mistakes

• Invert always runs last. If a hue shift or color change you expect doesn't survive after turning on Invert, it's because Invert negates the already-adjusted image, not your original colors.
• Blur doesn't scale with image size. The same pixel value looks much stronger on a small image than a large one — zoom in on the Result panel before deciding a blur value "isn't working."
• Grayscale and Sepia are sliders, not switches. You don't have to go all the way to 100% — partial values give you a muted or lightly tinted look instead of full black-and-white or full sepia.
• There's no quality slider on this tool. JPG and WebP exports are fixed at 92% quality. If you need finer control over file size, run the result through Compress Image afterward.
• JPG has no transparency. If your source is a transparent PNG and you export as JPG, the transparent areas get filled with white.

Related tools

• Rotate & Flip — straighten or mirror a photo before or after adjusting its colors.
• Watermark Image — stamp a text watermark onto the adjusted result.
• Compress Image — shrink the file size with full control over quality.
• Convert Image Format — switch the output between PNG, JPG and WebP with a quality slider.

Frequently asked questions

Is my photo uploaded anywhere when I adjust it?

No. All eight effects are applied inside your own browser using the canvas's native filter support. The only way a copy leaves your device is if you sign in and choose to save the result to your Gallery.

Why does turning on Invert sometimes give an unexpected color?

Invert is always the last effect applied, after brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, grayscale, sepia and blur. It negates whatever the other sliders have already produced, not your original, untouched photo — so the order those effects already ran in affects the final inverted result.

Can I make an image partially black and white instead of fully grayscale?

Yes. Grayscale is a 0–100% slider, not an on/off toggle, so a value like 40% or 60% gives you a partially desaturated look instead of forcing full black and white.

Does this tool have a quality setting for JPG or WebP?

No. Unlike Compress Image or Convert Image Format, Adjust & Filters doesn't expose a quality slider — JPG and WebP exports are always encoded at a fixed 92% quality.

Will blur or other adjustments reduce my image's resolution?

No. The output canvas is created at the same pixel dimensions as the source image — blur, color and brightness adjustments change pixel values, not the image's width or height.