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Image Tools

Image Highlight Adjuster

Tame the bright parts of a photo. Skies that look washed out, white shirts without folds and shiny skin on sunny days often hold more detail than you see. The highlight adjuster darkens only the bright regions to bring that detail back, while shadows and midtones stay as they are. Negative values do the reverse and make highlights glow.

  • Files stay on your device
  • No sign-up
  • Free to use

How to use Image Highlight Adjuster

  1. Drop one or more photos onto the page.
  2. Raise the slider to recover highlights, or lower it to brighten them.
  3. Adjust region size for natural transitions.
  4. Download the adjusted photos.

Image Highlight Adjuster features

Highlights only

Dark areas stay untouched.

Region-based

Bright regions move together, without halos.

Recover or boost

One slider in both directions.

Colours kept

All channels scaled together.

Batch

Apply the same settings to up to 50 images.

Private

Processed in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

When to use Image Highlight Adjuster

  • Recovering skies in landscape photos.
  • Bringing back texture in white clothes and walls.
  • Reducing shine on faces.
  • Balancing photos taken in harsh midday sun.

Image Highlight Adjuster FAQ

Can it bring back completely white areas?

No. Pixels that are pure white in the file contain no detail. The tool can make them grey, not detailed. It works on bright areas that still have some variation.

How is this different from lowering exposure?

Exposure darkens everything. The highlight adjuster uses a mask of the bright regions and leaves the rest of the photo as it is.

What does region size do?

It sets how large the bright areas are that change together. Larger sizes look more natural; smaller sizes add local contrast in clouds and textures.

Should I use it with the shadow adjuster?

Often yes. High-contrast scenes benefit from recovering highlights and lifting shadows, which compresses the tonal range like an HDR photo, but more subtly.

Which formats can I use?

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF (first frame), BMP and AVIF in; JPG, PNG or WebP out. PNG and WebP keep transparency; JPG gets a white background.

Are my images uploaded?

No. The images are processed in your browser and never leave your device.

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Recovering highlights

Highlights are the brightest tones in a photo: sky, clouds, reflections, white surfaces and lit skin. Cameras record them up to a maximum value, and everything above that is clipped to pure white. Between “well exposed” and “clipped” lies a band of very bright tones where detail is present but compressed, so it looks flat and washed out. That band is what the highlight adjuster works on.

The tool builds a brightness map of the image and blurs it to identify bright regions rather than single bright pixels. A highlight mask grows with the square of that regional brightness, so midtones are barely touched and only truly bright areas change. Within those areas, pixels are darkened in proportion to their own brightness, which stretches the compressed detail apart again.

All three colour channels are scaled by the same factor, so colours keep their hue. A blue sky becomes deeper blue instead of grey, and skin keeps its tone.

Negative values brighten the highlights instead. That is useful for high-key portraits, product photos on white, and for adding sparkle to water and snow.

Processing happens on your device; photos are never uploaded.

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