Sliders are answers — the trick is knowing the question. This guide works backwards from what actually bothers people about a photo.

“My photo is too dark”

The reflex answer is brightness, and it usually works. The better first answer depends on what is dark:

• The whole frame is underexposed → Exposure first. +20 to +40 covers most phone photos taken against the light. It’s a stop-based multiply, so it feels like having shot it slightly brighter.
• The subject is dark but the background is fine → Shadows +20…+50. Its luminance mask lifts dark tones while leaving the already-bright areas alone — exactly the fix for backlit faces and indoor shots against windows.
• Everything is dark and muddy → Exposure a little, then Contrast +10…+20 to re-separate the tones. A lifted photo with no contrast looks foggy.

“My photo looks flat and lifeless”

Nine times out of ten that’s Contrast. Flat means tones cluster around mid-gray; contrast pushes them apart symmetrically, restoring depth without moving average brightness much. Start at +15, stop when shadows look natural again.

If tone is fine but the colors feel washed out, that’s Saturation’s job — +10…+25 is the believable range. If contrast AND saturation both seem needed, do contrast first; saturated flatness is worse than plain flatness.

“The colors feel wrong”

• Too blue / sterile (shade, overcast, LED light) → Warmth +15…+35.
• Too orange / yellow (tungsten bulbs, sunset) → Warmth −15…−35.
• Garish, neon → Saturation −10…−30. Slightly desaturated reads as sophisticated; most photos tolerate −10 gracefully.
• Nothing wrong, just boring → a preset is a fair shortcut here — Postcard for punch, Attic Light for a faded feel — then trim with the sliders, since presets are just slider bundles.

“It’s soft / slightly blurry”

Sharpen +15…+35 recovers perceived edge crispness — phone photos and anything that’s been resized usually benefit. Two honest limits: sharpening can’t fix missed focus (it exaggerates edges, it doesn’t invent detail), and past ~+40 it draws visible halos. Check at 100% zoom — the editor’s zoom control exists for exactly this.

For the opposite problem — noisy high-ISO shots or harsh skin texture — negative sharpen (−10…−25) applies a gentle blur that takes the edge off.

“The sky is blown out” / “the shadows are crushed”

• Blown highlights → Highlights −20…−60. It dims the bright quarter of the tone range, often recovering cloud detail that looked gone. If the sky was captured as pure white (clipped at the sensor), nothing recovers it — the detail was never recorded. Highlights will still make it less glaring.
• Crushed blacks → Shadows +20…+60, the mirror image.

“I want it to look like a film photo”

The recipe is small: Contrast −15…−25 (film has softer rolloff), Warmth +10…+20, Grain +15…+35, optional Vignette +15…+25. Or just tap Bargain Bin — that’s essentially this recipe pre-bundled — and tune from there.

“I want drama”

Contrast +25…+40, Saturation +10…+20, Vignette +15…+30, Sharpen +10…+20. That’s also roughly what Postcard does — compare the recipe against your taste on the sliders.

The 30-second default order

When in doubt: exposure → shadows/highlights → contrast → warmth → saturation → sharpen → vignette/grain. Tone before color, corrections before style. The workflow guide walks through a full edit; the math page shows what each of these does to the pixels.

Frequently asked questions

Exposure or brightness — which should I use for a dark photo?

Exposure first. It's scaled in photographic stops (×2 per +100), so +30 is a third-stop lift that feels natural. Brightness does nearly the same multiply here, so think of it as the fine-tuning dial once exposure is roughly right. If the photo is dark only in the shadows, skip both and use the shadows slider instead.

My photo looks flat — contrast or saturation?

Usually contrast. 'Flat' is most often a tone problem (everything clustered around mid-gray), not a color problem. Try contrast +15…+30 first; if the photo still looks washed-out in hue rather than in tone, add saturation +10…+20 after. Boosting saturation on a tonally flat photo just gives you vivid mud.

How much sharpening is too much?

When you can see it at fit-to-screen zoom. Halos — light/dark fringes along edges — mean you've gone past +40 or so on most photos. The honest check: zoom to 100% and look at a high-contrast edge. Crisp is good; outlined is too far.

When is a vignette a good idea vs a gimmick?

A vignette is a composition aid: it darkens the edges so the eye settles on the subject. It earns its place on portraits and centered subjects at +10…+25. It becomes a gimmick when it's strong enough to notice as an effect — if the first thing a viewer sees is the dark corners, dial it back.