Free Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery
Recover shadow detail in a photo you want to paint from. Shadows are lifted and highlights brought down area by area, so the texture inside them stays, the middle values do not move, and the tool says what the camera never recorded. On your device; nothing is uploaded. Exports PNG and JPG. Free, with no sign-up.
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Area by area.Each neighbourhood is lifted as a whole, in linear light, so the texture inside a shadow keeps its contrast.
The middle stays put.Black, white and the middle value do not move. Only the darks rise and only the lights come down.
The value order, watched.The page says when lifted shadows reach the lights' darks, and can hold the lift there.
What is truly lost.Pure white, pure black and single clipped colors are counted and marked. Nothing is invented to fill them.
- Free
- No sign-up
- Runs in your browser: your image never leaves your device
How do I recover shadow detail in a photo?
Recover shadow detail by lightening only the dark areas of the photo and leaving its middle values and lights alone. Choose the photo, raise Shadows until the forms inside the darks can be read, and stop before the shadows grow as light as the lights. Detail the camera recorded as pure black cannot be brought back.
How to use the Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery
The tool takes 6 steps, all on your device.
Choose a reference photo, or try a sample.
Drag Shadows to open the darks and Highlights to bring the lights down.
Read the Value order line: it says whether the shadows have caught up with the lights.
Click a point on the picture to read its value, 1 to 10, before and after.
Switch on Mark what the photo never recorded to see what is pure white or pure black.
Set Reach and Halo guard if an edge shows a rim, then export PNG or JPG at full size.
What the Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery does
Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery opens a reference's shadows and highlights on the 1 to 10 value scale, with a halo guard, and keeps colors.
For the reference, not the painting
One of the artwork photo tools: it makes a dark or contrasty reference readable before you draw from it.
Values from 1 to 10
The picture's darkest and lightest parts, and any point you click, read before and after.
Halo guard
At the standard setting a rim along a hard edge stays under 2 % of the step.
Reach
Small for a fold or a nostril, large for a wall in shadow or a sky.
Colors kept
Red, green and blue are scaled together, so a lifted shadow keeps its hue.
Full size, in a worker
The export is made from the full photograph, off the main thread, as PNG or JPG.
How it compares with other shadow and highlight tools
Each was given the same test picture in a browser on 3 October 2026: three flat bands, dark (45 of 255), the middle value (99) and light (225), with its shadows control pushed to the maximum. Only what was measured or seen is stated.
| Feature | This tool | ImageOnline Exposure | Vayce Shadows and Highlights | 123PassportPhoto Shadows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dark band after (was 45) | 65 | 66 | 227 | 132 |
| Middle band after (was 99) | 99 | 105 | 151 | 147 |
| Light band after (was 225) | 225 | 225 | 225 | 227 |
| Dark band still the darkest | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Highlights control | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Neighbourhood size setting | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Marks what was never recorded | Yes | Pure white and pure black | No | No |
| Values read before and after | Yes | No | No | No |
| Other servers the page contacted | None | 21 | 12 | 5 |
ImageOnline also has an exposure slider and negative settings that darken; Vayce has separate tonal-width sliders; all three say they keep the picture in the browser. Their maximum settings are stronger than they need be used, and a gentler setting moves the middle band less.
For painters working from imperfect photographs
Portrait painters, landscape painters and students recover detail from imperfect photographs.
Portrait painters
Read the turn of a cheek or an eye socket that the photo left as one dark shape.
Landscape painters
Open a foreground shot against a bright sky without washing the sky out.
Students
See how far a camera's shadows are from what the eye saw, and how little is really in them.
Why are a camera's shadows darker than the ones you saw?
A camera's shadows are darker than the ones you saw because an eye adapts as it moves: it opens for a shadow and closes for a sunlit wall. A camera sets one exposure for the whole frame, so with a bright sky in view the shadows fall near black, and with the shadows exposed the lights go white. A painter who copies that photograph copies the camera's limits.
Lifting the shadows undoes part of it. The detail the sensor recorded in the darks is still in the file, packed into a few low numbers; the tool spreads it out again. What it cannot do is add detail that was never recorded.
Lifting shadows without flattening them
A plain curve adjustment brightens every dark pixel by an amount set by its own tone. That squeezes the differences between dark pixels, which is the texture, and it moves the middle values as well. This tool works out how light each neighbourhood is, lifts the neighbourhood as a whole, and leaves the differences inside it standing.
The risk of working by neighbourhood is a halo: a pale rim round a dark shape where its neighbourhood included the bright ground. The Halo guard makes the neighbourhood follow edges. Reach sets how large a neighbourhood is.
Keeping shadows darker than lights
A painting reads by its two families, light and shadow, and the old rule is that the lightest thing in shadow stays darker than the darkest thing in light. A hard lift can break it: the shadow side of a face rises until it matches the dark accents on the light side, and the form goes flat.
The Value order line reports both figures as values from 1 to 10, read from lightness in the Oklab color space as Björn Ottosson defines it. With Keep the value order on, Shadows stops at the last setting where the rule holds. To see the two families as flat shapes, try the result in the notan generator.
What cannot be recovered
A blown highlight is an area where red, green and blue all reached their limit; a blocked shadow is one where all three fell to zero. The file holds one flat number there. Bringing a blown sky down gives grey, not clouds.
The marks show these areas before you spend time on them. Where one channel alone is at its limit the color is wrong but the shapes often survive. For a subject you can shoot again, a second, darker exposure records what this one lost.
Further reading
The page below goes further into the ideas the Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery works with, and opens on the site named beside it.
- Light and shadow lessons on Artistic Masterclass (ArtisticMasterclass.com)
Tips from a working artist
From Sujith Puthran, artist and founder: what I actually do at the easel.
I lift the shadows only until I can find the forms, then paint them darker than the screen shows. The lifted picture is for reading, not for matching.
If the marks cover the passage I care about, I go back and take the photograph again, two stops darker.
Why your picture stays on your device
The Shadow Recovery is a program your browser downloads and runs by itself. When you choose a picture, the browser reads it from your files and does the work on your own phone or computer; no copy is sent to this site or to anyone else, and what you export is saved straight from the browser. That is why there is nothing to upload and nothing to sign up for. The privacy page says what the site does collect.
Questions about the Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery
The 6 questions below cover brighter shadows, blown highlights and dark photos, then halos, limits and privacy.
Shadows and highlights
How do I brighten the shadows in a photo without washing it out?
To brighten the shadows in a photo without washing it out, lift the dark areas only. This tool raises tones below the middle value and leaves the middle and the lights alone, so the picture keeps its contrast.
Can blown highlights be recovered?
Only partly: blown highlights can be recovered where the file still holds detail. An area recorded as pure white has none, and lowering it gives flat grey. Switch on the marks to see which areas those are. Lights that are bright but not pure white do come down.
How do I fix a dark reference photo?
To fix a dark reference photo, raise Shadows if the whole picture is dark; the darker a tone is, the more it is lifted. A photograph that is dark because it was underexposed also gains noise in its shadows when they are lifted.
The tool
What is a halo, and how do I avoid one?
A halo is a pale or dark rim along the edge of a shape, left by adjusting an area together with its surroundings, and you avoid one with two settings. Set Halo guard to High, or Reach to Small, and the rim goes.
Why does Shadows stop before the number I set?
Shadows stops before the number you set when Keep the value order is on, because past that point the lightest shadows would be lighter than the darkest lights. Switch it off to lift further; the page then warns when the two families merge.
Does the Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery upload my photo?
No, the Reference Shadow/Highlight Recovery does not upload your photo. It is read and changed in your browser, and the page contacts no other server.
- The tone map's method: bottosson.github.io/posts/oklab · checked 2026-10-03
Open the shadows, calm the lights, and know which parts of the photograph have nothing left to give.
Free · No sign-up · Runs in your browser