I know this may be a dumb question with an obvious answer, but I just want to know how to lighten/darken pictures i have taken with my digital camera. I open them with Paint, but can't find anything in the index that deals with that. I can alter the pictures 100 different ways with all those other options, but I just want to lighten the image up a little!! An old image editing software i had just had a little scale and preview pane to lighten/darken the image - it was simple. any help is greatly appreciated!

I doubt that Paint is sophisticated enough to lighten/darken an image. I've used Ulead's PhotoImpact to lighten/darken and also PhotoShop. At Ulead.com you can download a 30 day trial version of PhotoImpact. It'll cost $90 to buy. Of you can search for "free graphics software" on google. I tried and there were a ton of entries. Somewhere in that morass you'll probably find a graphics program.

Since you have your own digital camera, there should be some image editing software on the CD which accompanied it. Alternatively, you could try the free DCenhance from www/mediachance.com, which can perform simple light/dark editing.

Thanks to both of you, I'll try your suggestions..

I use Adobe Creative Suite to edit my images... its a bit pricey... you could probably get a third party app off the net for free to do this.