We all, now and again, try to improve the appearance of something - or, frequently, of ourselves - to make a better impression. It could be as simple as wearing newer and more fashionable clothes, or taking extra care with our hair. It could be hunting out every last stray crumb in the back seat of a car for sale to make it more appealing to buyers. Or it could be an image of an unusually plump, upright and enticing burger on a leaflet sent out by a local late-night takeaway. In each case, the enhancement isn't in a lie, there's no attempt to con anyone into seeing something that isn't there - rather, the intention is to make the very best of what's there, promoting the positives and hiding the negatives. What we're creating is an idealised visual impact.

That implausibly tempting late-night burger, for instance: there's nothing in the picture which won't be found in the snack itself, but the image is idealised, it has the most attractive appearance that the sandwich could possibly have - and realistically, the burger that you come out with probably won't be as visually arresting. This is a familiar and all but universal approach, not just amongst post-pub eateries but throughout the food industry, from frozen meals to stylish restaurants the aim is always and everywhere to attract the customer with the suggestion of mouth-wateringly perfect dishes whilst staying strictly within the limits of only showing what's actually being sold.

These principles don't just apply to food - it's perhaps only in that industry that the difference in appearance between advertised image and end product is quiet as obvious. But all companies, whatever goods or services they provide, can benefit from ensuring that everything they offer is seen in the best possible light.

Chances are, you'll have heard of Photoshop as a tool for improving images (an activity increasingly referred to, indeed, as 'Photoshopping'). However, you might imagine that Photoshop is a highly technical piece of software, heavy with solutions for every imaginable picture-manipulating demand. And you'd be right; Photoshop is very much the leading application for design professionals. You might also imagine, then, that it's too complicated and difficult to bother with if you're only after a few improvements to images on your company's website, in advertising or brochures. In that case, you'd be quite wrong; know how to find and use the program's simpler tools, and you'll know how to transform the way the world sees your business. Let's take a quick look at the easier-to-use corners of Photoshop.

A sensible place to start is with the overall appearance of your picture. Under 'Adjustments' in the Image menu you'll find a range of options for tweaking the factors that make the image look the way it does. We're all no doubt familiar with Brightness and Contrast from adjusting the television, and Photoshop provides sliders that do just what you'd expect. However, these have a very uniform application; to directly adjust the lighter and darker elements of an image, the Shadows/Highlights section on the Adjustments menu gives you sliders to control the brightness of highlights and, indeed, the darkness of shadows.

Another common flaw with images coming straight off the camera is dull, washed out colours - our own eyes are far better at interpreting colours than any camera, so images sometimes need a little help to catch up with how we know they ought to be.

Staying in the Adjustments menu, you'll find a choice named Vibrance, which contains two sliders. On the bottom is Saturation: this increases the strength, brightness, boldness and, well, colourfulness of every colour in the picture, turning drab shades into something for more enticing (there's also a Saturation control in the Hue/Saturation section, where you can decide the range of colours used to make up the picture, but we'll keep things simple for now).

The upper slider, Vibrance is much the same in principle, but has a greater effect on paler colours than on those that are already bright, so if some parts of your image are more colourful than others you can avoid making any part of the image look exaggerated or artificial. Or with Selective Colour from the same menu, you can identify individual colours and enhance them to give the look you want, perhaps making the reds brighter or the blues paler.

You might have noticed that the Image menu has options labelled 'Auto Tone', 'Auto Contrast', and 'Auto Colour'. These serve as instant, one-size-fits-all solutions to deal with glaring faults with the tone, contrast and colour of a picture. But they're very imprecise, and by familiarising yourself with the manual controls, you can tailor each picture to your own needs with ease. And there's one further vital piece of advice: experiment! I promise that nothing will go wrong if you click on everything to see what it does. You can undo any changes (at the top of the Edit menu, or just hit Ctrl + Z), so go ahead, play around.

There's another improvement that's widely associated with Photoshopping: removing blemishes. However, although this sometimes gets a bad name (primarily from making models look unrealistically and unattainably flawless) it has a far wider use, in removing anything from a picture that shouldn't be there. It doesn't even have to be used for enhancing the way people look - a retailer may be placing a shot of their store on a website, and just before they upload it, they notice a scrap of litter blowing into the picture. It might be a small matter, but it's visible, and gives the wrong impression of the company. Fortunately, the small matter is easily solved: on the Photoshop toolbar (down the left hand side) there's an icon that looks like a sticking plaster. Right-click on the plaster, select Spot-Healing Tool, adjust the size to match that of the blemish in the picture (either by using the [ and ] keys, or by right clicking on the image and moving the Size slider), and just click on the offending spot. In an instant, it's wiped out - Photoshop just copies the details from a similar spot nearby to match where you're clicking. If only cleaning in real life was this easy, eh?

Of course, there's an awful lot more that Photoshop can do, and we've barely scratched the surface (a short training course can help you with more advanced ways to improve your pictures - plus, as we said earlier, you can learn a lot by just trying different buttons and seeing what happens). But with the few simple techniques we've discussed here, any picture can be given enough of a polish to ensure that its appearance is spot on. And with the most attractive images, you can be confident that the impression your company makes on the world will only be positive.