Photoshop CS5 help please?

[slope]

What's the easiest way to make the white in the Z Bends warning sign whiter? And maybe the red of the triangle brighter?

Bends by Paul Weston, on Flickr

[Samuel D]

Hopefully a proper Photoshop jockey will tell us a better way, but my approach would be to use the Magnetic Lasso Tool to select everything inside the outer perimeter of the red border (including the white part) and then adjust Levels.

This worked well in a quick trial on your photo in this thread, although the selection could be more precise with the full-resolution image.

Nice place to ride!

[slope]

Hopefully a proper Photoshop jockey will tell us a better way, but my approach would be to use the Magnetic Lasso Tool to select everything inside the outer perimeter of the red border (including the white part) and then adjust Levels.

This worked well in a quick trial on your photo in this thread, although the selection could be more precise with the full-resolution image.

Nice place to ride!

Thanks Sam - new tool for me - trying to come to my dumb terms with its (mine really) limitations

[Jaded]

Do the selection and then feather it a bit. Otherwise the level changes will be abrupt. Also you can experiment with making the selection Inverse before feathering, then Inverse again, or grow it slightly. It depends.

If you only want it done once and don't remember things you did in the last, ask someone to do it for you.

[LEE]

If it's a RAW file then use Camera RAW editor to increase highlights.

If it's not in RAW then why not???  Stop not taking photos in RAW at once.

If it's just a jpeg you can still open them in a RAW editor such as Camera Raw and increase the whites selectively very easily.

or, as other have said, select the bits you want and "dodge" them or use a layer mask and increase exposure/contrast.

Photoshop only takes about 387 years to learn on average.

[Oranj]

Bends by Oranj, on Flickr