Light is to videos what imagery is to poetry. The mood of the videos conveyed comes largely when full power of the lighting takes effect, which lifts the video out of the dull gray average. We absorb the images in a video as a whole, and few cameramen dare to cast away this fundamental element at the cost of their final pieces.
But you might find it hard sometimes to throw ample light into the video while filming indoors and seek for a way to register greater lighting in your video. For this case, how to brighten a video falls in one of the techniques conducive to create flattering shots. Shared in the post is a detailed walk-through over a few practical solutions to brighten your videos. Feel free to follow through!
How to Brighten a Video on Windows and Mac
VideoProc Vlogger, designed as an ultimate free streamlined video editing software for both Mac and Windows OS, carries a high degree of inclusiveness and a wealth of features, open to both novice and veteran. With this tool in hand, you can brighten video without even trying and craft engaging video with cinematic look and content.
VideoProc Vlogger - Make Dark Videos Brighter on PC With Ease
- Incorporate both one-click fix and advanced solutions to brighten your videos.
- Adjust contrast, exposure, highlight, shadows, whites, HSL and more to make your video brighter.
- One-stop video processing program incorporating a basket of both basics and advanced tools and meeting the demands of all.
- Equipped with a 370+ codec library, it could work with just about any video format that you could ever imagine from camera, GoPro, iPhone, Android, camcorder, DJI, etc.
- An array of features grants users to process all sorts of editing scenarios, let alone make a dark video brighter on Windows 10 or macOS.
How to Brighten a Video with The Best Video Lighting Editor
For those who are either after a quick in-and-out action or further adjustment to brighten video, the tutorial down below could strike your fancy:
Step 1. Download and launch VideoProc Vlogger.
As you start the program, the Project panel will automatically pop up. Go to the right side of the Project panel, complete all the settings required of the video elements like project name, location, resolution, and frame, etc., and hit the "Create New Project" button to create a new project.
Step 2. Import the videos.
Hit the Plus button in the media library, locate and select the media files or folders and import them to the program. Drag and drop is available as well in the software.
Step 3. (Quick Fix) Lighten your video with one click.
Drag the video to the timeline first. As the Inspector activates, navigate to the Color & Filters Editor, and locate the Exposure slider. To adjust brightness, move the slider to the right to make a dark video brighter or left to obscure the images.
Tips:
Make sure to use the Exposure slider with prudence since it will compromise the contrast of the image and blear the footage if overused.
Step 4. (Advanced Tips) Edit video brightness with further adjustment.
Apart from Exposure slider, the Color & Filter Editor equips a batch of other tools to brighten the videos.
- Contrast: Slide the Contrast slider to the right to increase contrast where the bright parts get brighter while the dark parts deepen.
- Highlights: it controls the highlight of bright areas in the images but won’t affect the dark parts.
- Shadows: adverse to the Highlights feature, it determines the shadowiness of the dim part and helps to protrude the parts that you wish to show while obfuscating the less significant parts.
- Whites: it is used to alter the general brightness, yet the difference with Highlights lies in that Whites work on the whole images while the latter copes with just the bright part.
- HSL adjust: on the HSL tab, move the Luminance slider forward o back to brighten or darken the entire image.
- 3D-Lut adjust: applying filters is another way to adjust the brightness of the video. Go to the 3D-lut panel where you will find tons of filters that you could leverage in your video. Select one that could make your video brighter and insert it into your footage.
Step 5. Export the final project.
Click Export to save your video, but make sure you enable hardware acceleration and have all your information verified.
The Best App to Brighten Videos for Android or iPhone
Inshot is one of an array of brighten video apps, and just about everything that you could ever do to a video can be done within this one app. Both iOS and Android users can dive into a dazzle of editing and creation options and brighten the video with just simple adjustments. Detailed steps to make the videos brighter on iPhone and Android are as follows:
Step 1. Download the app from Apple or Android App Store on your mobile phone.
Step 2. Launch the app, click on the Video to import the video
Step 3. Go to the Filter > Adjust > Lightness
Step 4. Move the slider to the right or left to increase or decrease the brightness of the video.
Step 5. Tap the Save button to save the video.
Final Thoughts
Lighting is everything. The right lighting determines the mood and tones of the scenes, and evokes dramatic and subtle sensations in the videos. But cameras do not respond to lights in the way as the human eye does. If you are not able to shoot with enough light streaming in, the best bet is to recreate the scenario through post-editing. Therefore, how to brighten a video is a very technique to learn in video making.
