The Photoshop Tip of the Week for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore (www.digitalmastery.com):

This week we're going to explore Photoshop's adjustment options.

If you ever need to lighten an area of a photo so that black text will show up better, then choose Image>Adjust>Levels and move in the lower left slider. That's usually better than creating a layer full of white and lowering the opacity on that layer.

To quickly improve color photos, choose Image>Adjust>Levels, then Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) on the Auto button and set the Black and White clip values to .25 and then click ok. Once you've done that, you can open any color photo and choose Image>Adjust>Auto Levels and it should improve any less than optimal image.

When working with grayscale photos, adjust them by choosing Image>Adjust>Levels. Now, hold down the Option key (Mac), or Alt key (Windows) and then drag in the upper right slider until you see tiny specks of black showing up. While still holding that key, slide in the upper right slider until you see tiny specks of white showing up. That should give you good contrast. Finally, adjust the middle slider to control how bright the image is.

If you ever need to change the brightness or contrast of an image (using Levels, Curves, or anything else), but don't want the color or saturation of the image to change then try this: Immediately after applying the adjustment, choose Edit>Fade (or Filter>Fade in 5.5) and set the mode menu to Luminosity. Or, if you're using an adjustment layer, then set its blending mode at the top of the Layers palette to Luminosity.

If you'd ever like to force part of an image to black and white, then select that area and choose Image>Adjust>Desaturate. If you'd still like to see a hint of the old colors, then choose Edit>Fade (Filter>Fade in 5.5) and lower the opacity setting.

If you'd like to change the color of an object, select it, choose Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation and then experiment with the Hue and Saturation settings until the image looks the way you'd like it to.

And on an entirely different note... 9-11 has affected us all, at many levels. If there's anything good coming out of this, I believe it's that many of us are rediscovering some long dormant feelings of patriotism, and deeper appreciation of our American flag. If that describes you, then I've created a little gif file that you might enjoy.

I created the animation entirely in Photoshop and you are welcome to use it on your web page. You can download the image by right-clicking and choosing 'Save Picture As', or on the Mac, Ctrl-click on the image and choose 'Download Image to Disk'.

That's all for this week.

Don't forget to check out this week's Photoshop Questions of the Week at www.digitalmastery.com/questions

-Ben Willmore