How to Brighten and Darken Video the Advanced Way: With Composite Modes

One of the big pitfalls for any amateur videographer is lighting, or more specifically, the lack thereof. Sometimes you shoot something that's too dark to see, or the sun's too bright and everything's a little blown out.

Obviously there's no solution better than doing it right the first time. But when you have to fix something, you may be tempted to reach for the obvious solution: the Brightness/Contrast tool.

Don't.

The Brightness slider in any non-linear editor has its limitations; it just brightens or darkens the entire image without bias, giving your subject's eyes and mouth the same boost as the wallpaper in the background. Instead of a bad image, you get a slightly brighter or darker bad image. As such, the Brightness slider should only be used in moderation, perhaps a few points in either direction; it's better for darkening than brightening, and if your goal is to brighten, it should only be used in conjunction with a boost of Contrast, so that your blacks do not wash out to gray.

Instead of the lazy man's solution, a simple Brightness and Contrast pass, your non-linear editing software has something far more interesting; the same Screen, Multiply, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, what-have-you tools you may be familiar with from Adobe Photoshop. They're a little bit out of the way, but they can make brightening or darkening your video look a whole lot better.

Call them what you will-blending modes, composite modes, transfer modes, layer modes-but whatever name they go by, they can be a big help in solving a video problem. The trick is this: in Photoshop, you may have used these tools to help combine two different images. But for our video, we're going to Screen (or Multiply, or whatever) a video clip onto itself!