I was wondering, how do you guys do your B&W conversions?

I use photoshop, and just use the "desaturate" option. Is that how I should be doing it to look the best? I never really thought about it until yesterday.

Jay

I either use the channel mixer (as a new layer), or for CS3, I use the adjustment layer "black&white," which has sliders to fine tune the conversion.

Alternately, I use Capture NX, especially when I'm shooting RAW. But that's a Nikon thing, so not applicable in your case.

M

I use the channel mixer. Open it in PS, select "monochrome" then adjust the sliders in various combinations (while watching the histogram) until you find a good mix. After you do a few you'll get a pretty good handle on it.

- Scott

channel mixer +1

Agreed on the channel mixer.

From google:

Here's a selection of C/M settings to imitate film

Agfa 200X: 18,41,41
Agfapan 25: 25,39,36
Agfapan 100: 21,40,39
Agfapan 400: 20,41,39

Ilford Delta 100: 21,42,37
Ilford Delta 400: 22,42,36
Ilford Delta 400 Pro: 31,36,33
& 3200

Ilford FP4: 28,41,31
Ilford HP5: 23,37,40
Ilford Pan F: 33,36,31
Ilford SFX: 36,31,33
Ilford XP2 Super: 21,42,37

Kodak Tmax 100: 24,37,39
Kodak Tmax 400: 27,36,37
Kodak Tri-X: 25,35,40

And these basic ones:

Normal Contrast: 43,33,30
High Contrast: 40,34,60

I'm doing some playing around, and yeah the channel mixer does make it look better than what I've been doing. Cool.