Are your photos too dark? If you've tried increasing the brightness with whatever image tool you have, you've probably found that it doesn't work very well. The secret to fixing dark photos is to adjust the gamma.

Any image manipulation program worth owning will have a gamma adjustment feature. Look for it and play around. When you adjust the gamma, you're changing the brightness and the contrast at the same time.

For example, in this shot, the delectable Michelle is simply too dark.

Barely acceptable image, too dark

After increasing the gamma, we have a better image (although far from perfect).

Gamma has been significantly increased