To switch the Brightness/Contrast command in Photoshop CS3 (and higher) over to the new version, I'll simply uncheck the Use Legacy option in the dialog box. This also resets the Brightness and Contrast sliders to 0:

The image has been reverted back to its original state:

And the histogram is also showing that we're back to our original brightness values:

Now that I'm working with the new, improved version of the Brightness/Contrast command, I'm going to increase my image brightness by once again dragging the Brightness slider towards the right. As with the old version of the command, dragging the Brightness slider towards the right increases brightness, while dragging the slider towards the left decreases it. Again, there is no specific brightness value to use since every image is different, so I'll keep an eye on my photo in the document window as I drag the slider. Last time, I increased the brightness value to +40, which resulted in some clipping of the highlights. This time, using the new version of the command, I'm going to increase the brightness even further to +50:

Let's take a look at the image. With the new version of the Brightness/Contrast command, we get a much better result. Even though I raised the brightness value even further than I did with the old version of the command, we've still maintained much of the darker tones, which means we were able to brighten the image while still keeping much of the contrast. It no longer has that faded "layer of dust" look to it that we ended up with last time:

If we look at the histogram, we can see that I also haven't clipped any of the highlights. As I mentioned at the beginning, the new version of the Brightness slider works much like the midtone slider in the Levels command. The lightest and darkest areas of the image now remain untouched for the most part as you drag the Brightness slider. Only the levels in between are brightened:

It is still possible to clip highlights if you drag the Brightness slider too far to the right (or clip shadows by dragging too far to the left if you're darkening the image), so you'll definitely want to keep an eye on your Histogram palette as you work, but the new version of the Brightness/Contrast command gives us a much larger range of movement with the slider before we run into any problems. In fact, while the old version of the Brightness slider only went as high as +100 (or as low as -100), the new version goes all the way up to +150 (or down to -150).

Let's try boosting the contrast of the image using the new version of the Contrast slider. Last time, I increased the contrast value to +40 which resulted in large areas of the highlights, and even a few shadows, being clipped. This time, with the new version of the command, I'll drag the Contrast slider all the way to +70. As with the Brightness slider, every image is different so there's no specific contrast value to use. I'm using +70 here only because it works well with this particular photo. You'll need to keep an eye on your image in the document window as you drag the slider to judge the results:

Here's the photo after increasing the contrast. Even though I raised the contrast level far beyond the value I used with the old version of the Brightness/Contrast command, there are no visible signs of any shadow or highlight clipping:

To confirm that we haven't clipped any highlights or shadows, let's take a look at the histogram. Sure enough, the histogram looks great! It now extends all the way across the tonal range from black to white without clipping a single highlight or shadow:

At this point, I'm happy with the results. The improved Brightness/Contrast adjustment in Photoshop CS3 has made it easy to add life to a dull, flat image without the horrible clipping problems that the command has suffered with throughout most of Photoshop's lifetime. In fact, just to demonstrate how much better Brightness/Contrast in Photoshop CS3 really is, I'm going to drag the Contrast slider all the way to the right to its maximum value of +100:

Remember what happened when I did this using the old version of the command? When we looked at the histogram, we saw that it had virtually disappeared, leaving only tall spikes on either side indicating that most of the image detail had been clipped to pure black or white. This time, with the new version, even though I've increased the contrast value to its maximum, we see no such problem in the histogram. There is some minor highlight detail being clipped, but it took raising the contrast value all the way to +100 before running into the problem:

With the old version, the image was completely destroyed at this point, looking more like a weird special effect than a retouched photo. But with the new version of the Brightness/Contrast command in Photoshop CS3, even with the contrast value maxed out, the image still looks great:

As I mentioned at the beginning, even with its major improvements, the Brightness/Contrast command still isn't the most professional way to improve tone and contrast in a photo. For important images, you'll want to stick with Levels or Curves to get things right. But if all you need is a quick, no hassle way to brighten or boost the contrast of an image and you have a copy of Photoshop CS3 or higher, just add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer, make sure the Use Legacy option is unchecked, and drag the Brightness and Contrast sliders as needed (while keeping an eye on the Histogram palette of course). After years of destroying images, the Brightness/Contrast command in Photoshop finally works the way you'd expect, and it doesn't get much easier than this.