How to brighten a video on Android

The Adjust panel in Google Photos has more controls than you need for a simple brightening. These are the ones that matter when a clip is too dark:

• Brightness changes the exposure of the whole frame. Start here when everything is dim, but watch bright areas such as lamps or sky, which climb too.
• Shadows lifts detail in the darkest areas while leaving bright areas mostly alone. It is the better choice when a face is in shade but the background is fine.
• HDR effect brightens and adds contrast across the video. It can help when a person stands in front of a bright window; see also brighten a backlit video.
• Highlights and White point control the bright end. Lower Highlights if Brightness has turned the sky or a lamp into a flat white patch.
• Black point sets the darkest value. Raise it after brightening if the shadows look milky; lowering it greys them further.
• Contrast widens or narrows the gap between light and dark. A small increase restores depth after a large lift.

Exposure-style controls multiply every tone, so a clip that is uniformly dark responds well to them. Shadow controls work selectively on the lower end, which suits scenes with both dark and bright areas. Combining a moderate Brightness lift with a little Shadows usually looks more natural than one setting at its maximum.

On Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets, the Gallery app has its own editor. Samsung’s current help lists the following steps; the options you see may vary with your model and One UI version.

1. Open the Gallery app and select the video.
2. Tap the Edit icon (the pencil).
3. Tap the Tone icon (the sun), then choose an option such as Brightness, Exposure, Contrast or Highlights and adjust it with the slider.
4. To overwrite the clip, tap Save, then Save again. To keep the original, tap More options (the three vertical dots), then Save as copy.
5. To start again, tap Revert, then Revert to original.

Many Galaxy phones also have a Video brightness option under Settings → Advanced features. That setting only changes how videos look while they play in some apps. It does not alter the file, so a clip you send to someone else will still look dark to them.

Phone cameras raise their gain in dim light, which adds noise. In a dark clip that noise sits unnoticed in the shadows; brightening lifts it into view as speckles and coloured blotches. The darker the original, the more of it you will see.

• Grainy: use a smaller lift, or brighten with Shadows rather than Brightness. The Google Photos video Adjust tools do not include a noise reduction setting, so the main defence is restraint.
• Grey and flat: the darkest tones have been raised too far. Raise Black point or add a little Contrast.
• White patches: the bright parts have clipped. Lower Highlights or White point, or reduce Brightness slightly.
• Nothing there: areas recorded as pure black hold no detail to reveal. Editing can only make their noise visible. See what to do when a video is too dark.

Google Photos saves the edited version as a copy, so the original remains in your library. In Samsung Gallery, Save replaces the clip in the gallery while Save as copy keeps both, and Revert → Revert to original takes you back to the starting point.

Saving re-encodes the video, and messaging apps often compress it again when you send it. Brighten once from the original rather than editing an already edited copy, which loses a little more quality each time. For more on this, read brighten a video without losing quality.

Older or lower-memory phones may not show Adjust for videos at all. Google lists 3 GB of RAM and Android 8.0 as the minimum for Adjust, and says non-Pixel phones on Android 9 do not support video editing.

brighten.video works in a modern browser such as Chrome on Android, and on a computer. The video is processed on your device and never uploaded. It is useful when your phone lacks the Adjust tools, when you need noise reduction, or when you want to see the change against the original.

• Tap Select video and choose the clip, then tap Auto brighten for an automatic starting point that keeps night scenes looking like night.
• Or pick a quick fix, Night video, Dim room, Backlit or Slightly dark, and adjust Strength.
• Turn on Before and after to drag a divider across the picture and compare.
• In More options, raise Noise reduction to calm grain, or fine-tune Shadows, Blacks and Highlights with a Histogram or Waveform to guide you.
• Tap Export video, then Download video or Share once “Your video is ready” appears.

The export is a new encode, so it is never lossless, and no tool can bring back detail that was clipped to pure black or white. Very long clips depend on the phone’s memory and speed. Clips shot after dark usually respond best to the Night video quick fix.