Advantage+ "Visual touch-ups" and "Adjust brightness and contrast": the edits that change how your product looks

These two are the quiet ones: no new text, no music, just a slightly different crop and slightly different colours than the file you approved. On product photography that is the whole problem.

Adlio team3 min read

Two small edits with a large effect on product ads

Most enhancement complaints are loud: a text bar, a soundtrack, a rewritten headline. These two are quiet. The ad still looks like your ad, just cropped a little differently and a little brighter. If you sell on colour accuracy (cosmetics, fashion, paint, print) or on precise framing (a product with a claim in the corner), quiet is worse, because nobody notices until a customer does.

Visual touch-ups

Meta's description, fetched 31 August 2026: "Visual touch-ups is a generative AI feature that automatically crops and expands your chosen media to fit more placements." The developer guide describes the same key, image_touchups, as "Automatically cropped and expanded to fit more placements".

So it is two things at once: a per-placement crop (Feed gets one frame, Stories another) and, where cropping is not enough, the expansion covered in Advantage+ expand image. Jon Loomer's 2024 guide left it on with a note to monitor aspect-ratio problems; agencies with edge-sensitive creative turn it off.

For video, the counterpart is Video touch-ups: "a feature that can both crop your videos and use generative AI to expand your videos to look natural in all placements", keys video_auto_crop and video_uncrop.

Adjust brightness and contrast

Meta's description: "The brightness and contrast of your image can be adjusted if it may improve ad performance." Key: image_brightness_and_contrast. The complaints are specific and consistent: "Your tested-and-approved brand color treatment gets shifted" (HyperFX, May 2026); it "can distort brand colours or edited visuals" (Privyr, June 2026). There is no per-enhancement study from Meta on what it is worth; the only Meta lift figure for enhancements is the 4 percent from the 2022 bundle test.

A related export note: if your files are not in sRGB, Meta's own re-encode already shifts colours before any enhancement runs. Fix the profile first (see image specs for bulk launches), then decide about the toggle.

The catalogue lookalike: Image touch-ups

Not to be confused with Visual touch-ups: Image touch-ups is the catalogue feature, described by Meta as "Adapt your product images to fit 4:5 (Facebook and Instagram Feed) and 9:16 (Reels and Stories) placements", API key adapt_to_placement, and per Meta's reference "Default is opt-in." It only matters for Advantage+ catalogue ads, which Adlio does not create.

How to turn them off

  • Per ad: Enhancements panel, switch off "Visual touch-ups" and "Adjust brightness and contrast" (and "Video touch-ups" on video). Meta warns that "Some enhancements can only be turned off in Advanced preview".
  • Bulk: Ads tab, same-format ads, Edit dropdown, "Advantage+ creative".
  • API, per creative: "image_touchups": {"enroll_status": "OPT_OUT"} and "image_brightness_and_contrast": {"enroll_status": "OPT_OUT"} inside degrees_of_freedom_spec.creative_features_spec; on video, video_auto_crop and video_uncrop. Both image keys are in the set Adlio verified against the live API and sends by default. Note that Meta's reference table and its getting-started guide do not list exactly the same keys (the guide documents image_brightness_and_contrast, the reference table omits it), which is why we validate every key live rather than trusting either page; the detail is in how to audit enhancements via the API.

Remove the reason, then the toggle

The crop half of Visual touch-ups only has work to do when a placement wants a ratio you did not supply. Export 4:5 and 9:16, route them correctly (aspect ratios in bulk launches), and the crop has nothing to fix. The colour half has no upstream fix except the toggle. Adlio's defaults are both off, per creative type, with a per-account switch if you want them on. The full control map is in how to turn off Advantage+ creative enhancements.

If you launch in bulk, the cheapest place to switch these off is at creation: Adlio sends the opt-out for both keys, and every other enhancement key, on every creative it creates. See bulk upload Facebook ads with enhancements off.

Frequently asked questions

What does Visual touch-ups do exactly?+

Meta: "Visual touch-ups is a generative AI feature that automatically crops and expands your chosen media to fit more placements." For video the equivalent is Video touch-ups, which "can both crop your videos and use generative AI to expand your videos". In the API the image key is image_touchups and the video keys are video_auto_crop and video_uncrop.

What does Adjust brightness and contrast do?+

Meta: "The brightness and contrast of your image can be adjusted if it may improve ad performance." The API key is image_brightness_and_contrast. The complaint from agencies is consistent: "Your tested-and-approved brand color treatment gets shifted" (HyperFX, May 2026).

Is Image touch-ups the same as Visual touch-ups?+

No. Image touch-ups is the catalogue version ("Adapt your product images to fit 4:5 ... and 9:16 ... placements"), API key adapt_to_placement, default opt-in per Meta's reference. Visual touch-ups applies to single media ads. Adlio does not create catalogue ads, so only Visual touch-ups is relevant to its launches.

Sources

Adlio team

Built by media buyers who launch Meta ads in volume. Questions or corrections: support@adlio.ai.

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Advantage+ control

Keeping Meta's automatic creative enhancements off, on every ad, and proving it.

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