As Michael Fletcher admits at the Photodoto Web site, improving a color photo by converting it to black and white seems counter-intuitive, but his techniques appear to work. What he does is turn a color image into a black and white one in Photoshop. Then he manipulates its contrast, brightness and midtones. He saves those changes, returns to his original color image and applies the changes to it.

"With a little practice, this technique should give you a more contrasty, saturated, dynamic image," he writes. "It seems the brain has an easier time with the levels adjustments in black and white mode because it doesn't have to bother processing the color information. You can more easily see the direct effect to the image's brightness and contrast."