Highlight deep tones with image darkener

Transform simple snapshots into deeper and richer photographs when you darken images online. Canva’s free image darkener let you evoke emotions and bring more visual layers and life to your composition through play of light and shadow.

Darken an image

Adjust brightness, highlights, and shadows to darken images

Bring depth to your photographs

Enhance the dark parts of your pictures to add depth and create a sense of three-dimensionality. With a few, simple tweaks, take your photos from flat and basic images to deeper and more meaningful portraits. To darken images, simply adjust the Brightness, Highlights, and Shadows sliders in our photo editor. From a noir-themed photo book to a classic black and white invitation card, see how Canva’s intuitive image darkener tool establish a different narrative to your new and favorite Canva designs.

Find more beauty in the dark

Explore photo effects to keep your darkened image stylish. You’re also not limited to presets and filters in our photo editor. Enhance images with easy sliders to fine-tune your photo settings to your taste. Customize the darkness of your photo depending on your needs. Dim the entire image. Make the shadows bolder and darker. Dull down the colors. Highlight the night sky photography better for your portfolio or flaunt a mysterious look on Instagram with a darker image.

Complete your image with icons, graphics, and vectors

Decide the final look

Take advantage of Canva’s user-friendly photo editor to apply your final touches. Get professional results quickly and easily even with no expensive design tools or art experience. Access our extensive design library to complete your image with icons, graphics, and vectors. There’s more magic with Pro! You can resize images with Magic Resize or remove image background with Magic Erase—all within a click.

How to darken an image

Upload your photos
Open Canva to create from a blank canvas or use an existing template. Drag and drop your file to the editor or navigate to the ‘Upload’ tab. You can also use free stock photos from our content library.
Darken images
Select your photo and click Edit Image and Adjust to view all image settings. Explore the deep tones of your photo as you move the sliders to negative for Brightness, Highlights, and Shadows to effectively make image darker.
Explore other photo editing tools
Play with other image enhancer settings to take your photos to the next level. Look how contrast, saturation, and more affect your darker image. Check out photo filters and presets, crop, rotate, or mirror it to elevate your photo.
Add more elements
Browse our rich media library for photos, stickers, graphics, vectors, frames, backgrounds, or videos to dress up your image or personalize your design project further. Choose elements that’ll complement your darkened images.
Download and share
Finish your photo edits anytime, anywhere. Then, download your darker image as a high-quality JPG, PNG, or PDF file, and share it online straight from the editor.

Darken an image

Frequently Asked Questions

Striking the right balance between light and dark makes a good photograph. When post-processing photos, a good editor will also focus on the dark elements, using shadows to tell a story and add nuance to a photo. Depending on how it’s done and its purpose, a darker image can invoke feelings of sadness, longing, anticipation, suspense, or other heavy emotions, making dark photos a valuable literary device.

There are three basic ways to darken images: through brightness, contrast, or saturation. Brightness refers to the presence of light; turning it down reduces the light to darken image. This is a good easy fix for overexposed (i.e., over bright) images. Contrast is the difference in the brightest and darkest points of the photo; the higher the contrast, the greater the difference between light and dark. Finally, saturation is about color intensity. Bringing down the saturation darkens a photo by making the colors duller and grayer. Adjust these image settings using easy sliders from our free image darkener tool.

There are many online photo editors that can make pictures darker. You can adjust the darkening effect as you need it with our image darkener tool. Darken image and enhace other aspects of it in one editor. You can easily use it in a design and make other products off your photograph like posters, book covers, social media posts, and more.

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Darken an image

Create top designs

Highlight deep tones with image darkener

Bring depth to your photographs

Find more beauty in the dark

Decide the final look

How to darken an image

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I need to darken images?

How do you darken an image?

What tool can darken an image?

Explore more Photo Editor features