Fix Washed-Out & Flat Photos Instantly

That photo of the sunset looked epic on your phone’s screen. But when you check it later, there’s no sunset — just a bright white blob where the sky should be, and everything else looks like someone draped a thin white veil over it.

Washed out. Flat. No punch. The worst part? You can remember exactly how good the scene looked. The photo just doesn’t capture it.

What went wrong

“Washed out” usually means some combination of two problems: overexposure in the bright areas, and low contrast across the whole image.

Pointing your camera toward any bright light source — the sun, a window, bright sky — causes lens flare. Light bounces around inside the lens and scatters across the sensor, adding a milky haze to everything. Even without visible flare, shooting into the light compresses your tonal range.

Other causes:

• Fog and mist — atmospheric stuff that naturally flattens contrast
• Dirty lens — smudges scatter light before it even reaches the sensor
• Shooting through glass — car windows, plane windows, museum cases
• Old scans — faded photos that have lost their punch over decades

Bringing the punch back

PhotoInput looks at your image’s histogram — the graph showing how brightness is distributed — and expands that range to use the full spectrum:

• Contrast pushes shadows darker and highlights brighter
• Highlights recovery pulls back the blown-out areas
• Shadows deepens the dark tones for real depth
• Dehaze cuts through that milky scattering effect

The goal is a photo that looks like what you remember seeing — not flat, not hazy, but full of depth and dimension.

Preventing the washout

1. Shade your lens — a lens hood blocks stray light from the sides. In a pinch, use your hand.
2. Don’t shoot straight into the sun — angle yourself so the sun is to the side, not in front
3. HDR mode — your phone’s HDR captures multiple exposures and blends them, handling extreme contrast much better
4. Clean the glass — whether it’s your lens or a window you’re shooting through

Related: Washed out and low contrast are close cousins — check that too. If colors are the main casualty, see fix dull colors. For fog specifically, hazy photos has you covered.