Guilty Flash Question

I’m quite new to Flash (CS3 FLASH is what I have).

I was watching and working w/ online tutorials, to get the lay of the land, since I’ve never worked with flash, just your cheesy 29.00 webeasy website programs.

I have been reading some in the flash forums as well.

So I feel guilty that I went and bought a flash site template to play around with to try to get a site up and running quicker.

I know that “templates” are frowned upon, but I fiuguredthat as I practiced on it the learning curve would be accellerated.

Well I was doing fine, I redid my loading page animation, and then I came to the mainpage.

The photo is on one layer & on the next layer this what seems to be a black retangle the size of the photo.

The photo starts out bright and then darkens to it’s regular shade. (there is some other transition type actions but they are satisfactory)

The problem is that the photo starts out too bright. And I can’t get to where I can adjust the features of that rectangle on the next layer.

It were me, I would have simply faded the picture in with a tween adjusting the “brightness” level from the first frame to the last frame. But those values currently are the same.

So I’m guess that the rectangle is a “mask” that is controling the brightness. In that layer there is only gray on the timeline. And if I click on the end frames it wont give me the details so that I can adjust.

What do I need to do so that I can edit the “mask”, and does this sound Like a mask?

please forgive my “template” sin,lol

Thanks