Photoshop Curves
I’ve found that using curves in photoshop is the easiest and fastest way to dramatically brighten an image. For instance, here are the comparisons of the before and after images for this tutorial.
To begin, open up an image in photoshop and find the Layers, Channels, and Paths pallet. Then, under the half filled circle icon, click Curves.
This will bring you up to a window that looks like a grid. Using your mouse, click on the straight line (default) and drag it upwards to make an image brighter. (Of course, you can also drag the line downwards to make the image darker.) You may have to play around a bit to get the desired effect. Here is an example of what I chose for the tutorial’s example image.
