3 Great Ways to Adjust Video Brightness (Online, PR, and Phone)

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3 Great Ways to Adjust Video Brightness (Online, PR, and Phone)

Last Updated: 2022. 08. 03

Having ample, even, and stable lighting is essential for video making. However, in reality, the unforeseeable changing weather and wrong camera settings often leave us with dark or overexposed video footage.

However, it’s not the end of the day. If your footage ends up either too dark or too bright, here, we will walk you through how to easily brighten or darken a video online, in Premiere Pro, and on your phone (iPhone & Android).

Here’s What You Will Learn:

How to Make a Video Brighter by FlexClip Online

How to Brighten Dark Videos in Premiere Pro on PC

How to Lighten a Video on iPhone/Android by CapCut

Here is a quick takeaway for how to adjust video brightness:

In most of the video brighteners, you can either increase the parameter of brightness or exposure to make a video brighter or vice versa.

If you want to recover the details in highlights and shadows as you brighten or darken a video, preferably, you'd better shoot the footage in log so you can have the maximum dynamic range in video editing.

Whether you brighten or darken a video, maintaining a subtle balance between contrast, saturation, and color tune will produce better visual effects overall.

How to Make a Video Brighter by FlexClip Online

Well, having a flexible online video maker is probably the easiest way for most people to brighten or darken a video. You can adjust video brightness anywhere and at any time you want, with no software download and experience needed.

A feature-packed online video brightener you can use is FlexClip. It's an easy-to-use and versatile online video maker where you can directly upload your clips to the in-browser video editor from your PC or mobile phone and increase or decrease the properties of exposure and brightness to make a video brighter or darker. Pretty easy!

Use the feature-packed FlexClip online video maker to adjust video brightness.

Adjust video brightness Now

Besides, you can also adjust the video's contrast, hue, saturation, highlights and shadows, vignette, etc. to color-grade your video to your liking. While thousands of designer-made and fully-customizable video templates and video tools will also help you create a captivating video in clicks away.

Preview

Vlogger Youtube Channel Intro Outro

Use This Template

Preview

Animated Sport Intro

Use This Template

Step 1

Upload your clips to FlexClip from your PC or directly from your mobile phone.

Upload clips to FlexClip.

Step 2

Click the "+" button to add the footage to the timeline. Then you can trim or split the footage for the video moment you want.

Add the underexposed video to the timeline and trim and split the clip.

Step 3

Brighten a video.

Click the "Adjust" tool, then you can drag the slider of Exposure or Brightness to the right to increase the brightness of the video or vice versa.

Brighten a dark video by increasing its exposure and brightness.

Step 4

Adjust contrast and saturation, etc. of the video (optional).

As you brighten a video, the original footage will lose its vibrance and contrast and become a kind of washout effect. So, you can increase a bit of the video contrast and saturation or change the temperature of the video to make the video look more vibrant and cinematic. Check the 9 best hacks to make a cinematic video.

Increase the video’s contrast, temperature, and saturation to make it more vibrant and cinematic.

So, let's compare the dark video before and after being brightened by FlexClip online:

Adjust the brightness, color, and contrast of a video bY FlexClip

Create Now

Step 5

Preview and share.

Done with the editing. You can directly download the brightened video to your local PC or save it to YouTube, Google Drive, or Dropbox; A clickable link and embed code are also available for your blog or a private share.

How to Adjust Video Brightness in Adobe Premiere Pro

If you shoot the footage in log (or uncompressed raw video files) using mirrorless cameras or DSLRs, then using pro-level video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro to brighten or darken a video will help you better retrieve the details of highlights and shadows of a video without losing quality.

How to adjust video brightness in 3 ways by Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro offers you 3 ways to adjust video brightness, i.e. using “Lumetri Color”, “Brightness and Contrast”, and “Lighting Effects”. All of them are available in the “Effect Control” Window.

Option 1: Using Lumetric Color

Step 1

Import the video clip you want to brighten or darken

Step 2

Open the "Effect Control" window on the left from the top

Step 3

Adjust Video Brightness of the Chosen Clip

Enter " Lumetri Color " in the search bar > drag and drop the effect to your clips > open the ‘Correct Correction’ tab > adjust the exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadow to brighten or darken the video for the pleasing effect.

Option 2: Using Brightness and Contrast Effects

Step 1

Search “ Brightness & Contrast” in the search bar of the “Effect Control” Window

Step 2

Drag and Drop “ Brightness & Contrast” Effect to the Video

Step 3

Adjust the Properties of Brightness and Contrast to Adjust Video Brightness

Option 3: Using Lighting Effects

Step 1

Enter “Lighting Effects” in the “Effect Control” Window and Drag and Drop it to the Chosen Video

Step 2

Open Mulitple Light Options to Adjust Video Brightness

For example, you can choose ‘Spotlight” and adjust the angle of the light source and its intensity to brighten or darken the clip.

How to Lighten a Video on iPhone/Android by CapCut

If you are a TikTok or Instagram content creator, then directly adjusting the video brightness on your phone and uploading the video to social media would be much easier. So, a 100% free and powerful tool to edit video brightness on both iPhone and Android without the watermark is CapCut.

Lighten a video on iPhone/Android by CapCut

Step 1

Launch the CapCut on iPhone/Android and tap the "New Project" to upload an underexposed or overexposed video to the timeline.

Tap the New Project to import clips to CapCut.

Step 2

Brighten a video on iPhone/Android.

Tap the Adjust button > tap either "brightness" or "exposure" and drag the slider to the right to make a dark video brighter, or vice versa. CapCut will create a brightness adjustment layer and the video below this layer will be brightened or darkened. Pretty handy.

Increase the brightness and exposure of a dark video on iPhone/Android by CapCut.

Step 3

Export the video.

Set the video resolution, and FPS, and tap the export button to download the video to your camera roll or photo gallery.

Now, It's Your Move

By increasing or decreasing the parameters of Exposure or Brightness of footage, you can effectively make a dark video brighter or an over-blown video darker. The key to adjusting video brightness is to strike a subtle balance between highlight, shadow, and stilling keeping its flattering colors, contrast, saturation, etc. So, which option do you like best? Share this post on your Facebook or Twitter and leave your comments for us. Much appreciated!

Frank /

Passionate about photography, video-making and travel, Frank is a seasoned copywriter and a beloved father of 2-year-old daughter at FlexClip. He is always keen to share his latest discovery about video marketing and tricks to relive your memories through videos and images.