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bentopdf/docs/tools/adjust-colors.md

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2026-03-20 21:48:48 +05:30
---
title: Adjust Colors
description: Fine-tune brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, temperature, tint, gamma, and sepia in your PDF.
---
# Adjust Colors
A full color grading toolkit for PDFs. Adjust eight independent parameters -- brightness, contrast, saturation, hue shift, temperature, tint, gamma, and sepia -- with a live preview that updates as you move each slider.
## How It Works
1. Upload your PDF file.
2. The editor opens showing a preview of the first page and a color settings panel.
3. Move the sliders to adjust each color parameter. The preview updates in real time.
4. Click **Reset** to restore all sliders to their default positions.
5. Click **Apply** to process all pages and download the adjusted PDF.
## Options
- **Brightness** -- Lighten or darken the entire page (-100 to +100).
- **Contrast** -- Increase or decrease the difference between light and dark areas (-100 to +100).
- **Saturation** -- Boost or reduce color intensity (-100 to +100). Setting to -100 produces a grayscale result.
- **Hue Shift** -- Rotate the color wheel to shift all colors uniformly.
- **Temperature** -- Shift colors warmer (yellow/orange) or cooler (blue).
- **Tint** -- Add a green or magenta cast.
- **Gamma** -- Adjust midtone brightness using a gamma curve. Values below 1.0 darken midtones; values above 1.0 lighten them.
- **Sepia** -- Apply a classic sepia tone effect. Higher values produce a stronger brown tint.
## Features
- Eight independently adjustable color parameters
- Live preview that responds immediately to slider changes
- Reset button to quickly return to defaults
- Processes all pages in the document
- Works with any PDF content (text, images, graphics)
## Use Cases
- Brightening a dark scan or correcting overexposed pages
- Desaturating a colorful document to reduce ink usage before printing
- Applying a sepia tone to create an antique look for certificates or awards
- Correcting color temperature on photos embedded in a PDF
- Boosting contrast on faded or low-quality scanned documents
## Tips
- For a quick grayscale conversion, drag the saturation slider all the way to -100.
- The gamma slider is particularly useful for improving readability of scanned documents where midtones are too dark or too light.
- Like the other image-effect tools, this rasterizes each page. The output will be image-based, so text will not be selectable.
## Related Tools
- [Invert Colors](./invert-colors)
- [Scanner Effect](./scanner-effect)
- [Background Color](./background-color)