How to reduce number of colors in an image

I am fairly new to Photoshop and I'm learning as I go, so I apologize for using your time. I haven't worked with images that much - I've used MS Digital Image Suite with photos from my camera. That's the extent of my knowledge.
I am taking over a job from someone who is gone and I can't ask him how to do this. He used Photoshop to reduce the number of colors in an image (for example, a color drawing or clipart) to 2-6 colors. I haven't been able to figure this out. I've visited this site that explains how to reduce tones but it's still a lot of colors. I thought I might learn something from this link that explained how to make Photoshop cartoons, but I didn't. I've done a lot of searching but nothing seems to explain this. I know that the other guy had some knowledge of Photoshop but he wasn't a power user.
Thanks to anyone who will help me. (I am using CS5.)

Are you sure that he was using Photoshop? (see my third solution)
There are some plug-ins for Photoshop, but they basically do the same as the posterize or index mode: http://www.topazlabs.com/simplify/ (commercial) see this panel for colorizing comic art: http://vimeo.com/user3771002/videos
I would rather use posterize, as an adjustment layer, as you can control it.
Try with this layer stack, from bottom to top:
Convert the original image in a Smart Object, in order to use Smart filters and blur the image (Gaussian Blur, or noise>median or blur>smart blur or blur>surface blur could be interesting internatives) would be useful, to make smoother posterized areas.
A dodge/burn layers (a neutral gray layer in overlay mode) to adjust areas using the Dodge/burn tools.
the Posterize Adjustment layer, with very few colors
On top of it, put a gradient map adjustment layer, to control the posterized colors
Vectorizing in Illustrator can also be used to reduce the number of colors. Live Trace: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/illustrator/cs/using/WS714a382cdf7d304e7e07d0100196cbc5f-6229a .html
More on the topic: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/illustrator/cs/using/WS714a382cdf7d304e7e07d0100196cbc5f-622aa .html

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jeff

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