Brightening a photo.

Have just been sent a photo, and on the attachment it says it is JPG.

I put it in the 'paint' editor to rotate it through 90 degrees and that
works alright.

But it also needs to be lightened, so I sent it to my laptop that has
windows live photo gallery, which has the facility to lighten it. But when
in that program, it tells me it cannot process it because it is a 'read
only' file. Grateful for advice on what i might most simply do to lighten
it please.

 

Right click on the file and select 'Properties', then you should see a box
under the General with 'Read Only' selected, untick that box and select
'Apply'

 

["Followup-To:" header set to 24hoursupport.helpdesk.]

When you come to 'Save' the modified file, use 'Save As ...' and give it a
different name; that way you still have the 'original' as well as your
modified version - so you can start again if you don't like your changes
after all.

 

IrfanView beats Paint.

 

FastStone Image Viewer is my preference for most of my needs.
http://www.faststone.org/

 

I find that Irfanview and PICASA meet all my needs. But the OP should
remember the Golden Rule of editing images, never overwrite the original
especially at lower resolution. Safest way is often to copy to a new
folder and play with it there.

 

Whatever program you use, before messing around with the original
picture it's also a good idea to save it as a TIFF file, and do your
adjustments on that. That way, it doesn't suffer from progressive
degradations each time you save the intermediate steps. When you're
finished, you can convert it back to the a JPG. [And, as TIFFs are big,
don't forget to delete the unwanted steps.]