Image Shadow Adjuster
Bring back detail in the dark parts of a photo. Faces against a bright sky, rooms photographed towards a window and landscapes with deep shade often have shadows that are too dark while the rest is fine. The shadow adjuster brightens only the dark regions and leaves bright areas untouched – or deepens shadows for more contrast and drama. A region-size slider controls how naturally the effect blends.
- Files stay on your device
- No sign-up
- Free to use
Shadows
Brightens dark areas – faces against a bright sky, backlit subjects, shaded corners – without touching bright areas. Region size controls how large the areas are that move together; larger looks more natural, smaller gives more local contrast.
Output
How to use Image Shadow Adjuster
- Drop one or more photos onto the page.
- Raise Shadows to brighten dark areas, or lower it to deepen them.
- Adjust region size until the transitions look natural.
- Download the corrected photos.
Image Shadow Adjuster features
Shadows only
Bright areas are not affected.
Region-based
Whole dark areas lift together.
Brighten or deepen
One slider in both directions.
Colours kept
Hue and saturation stay natural.
Batch
Apply the same settings to up to 50 images.
Private
Processed in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
When to use Image Shadow Adjuster
- Fixing backlit portraits.
- Showing detail in shaded parts of landscapes.
- Brightening interiors next to bright windows.
- Adding mood by deepening shadows.
Image Shadow Adjuster FAQ
How is this different from increasing brightness?
Brightness lifts everything, so bright areas wash out. The shadow adjuster uses a mask of the dark regions and lifts only those.
What does region size do?
It sets how large the areas are that the tool treats as shadows. Small sizes increase local contrast but can create halos around edges; larger sizes look more natural.
Will noise become visible?
Shadows of phone and low-light photos contain noise, which becomes visible when brightened. Use the Image Noise Reducer afterwards if needed.
Can it recover pure black areas?
Only partially. If a region is completely black in the file, there is no detail to recover; it becomes dark grey.
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 photos uploaded?
No. The images are processed in your browser and never leave your device.
Region-based tone adjustment
Our eyes can see detail in bright sky and deep shade at the same time; cameras cannot. A photo must compromise, and when the camera exposes for the sky, people and objects in shade come out too dark. Lifting the whole image fixes the shadows but ruins the sky. The answer is local tone adjustment, known in editing programs as shadows/highlights.
The tool calculates the brightness of each pixel and a blurred version of that brightness map, which describes which regions of the image are dark. The shadow mask is strongest in dark regions and fades to zero in bright ones. Pixels are brightened in proportion to the mask, and the colour is kept by scaling all three channels together.
Using the blurred map rather than each pixel’s own brightness is important. It moves whole regions together, so a dark coat keeps its folds and texture instead of being flattened to an even grey. The region size controls the blur: large regions look like a change in lighting, small ones emphasise local contrast.
Negative values do the opposite and deepen the shadows, adding weight and drama to skies, architecture and black-and-white images.
Combine the shadow adjuster with the highlight adjuster for scenes with both problems. All processing happens on your device.