B&W from M8

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I use the JFI Profiles and like them very much. They are well worth the money.

 

Photoshop CS3 has a Black and White conversion that is really good too. Here is a tutorial on it from Russel Brown: http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/CS3Color_To_BWSM.mov

 

Here is another Russel Brown tutorial using Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation: Adobe - Design Center : Converting Color Images to Black and White

 

Here is a tutorial from Ian Lyons using the Channel Mixer: Tutorial 2 - Page 1

[sean_reid]

Hi Chris,

 

I've used all kinds of methods but I now mostly prefer the simplicity and results that come from using the JFI profiles with C1. There's a review on the site that shows results from each one, see what you think.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[SP0]

I'm surprised no one has suggested using the new Photoshop CS3 feature: convert to B&W right in the Raw converter.

 

This has an automatic mode which adjusts a colour filter (same as the much more complicated manual method film+filter others described), taking an intelligent guess at the settings that maximise tonal range. You can then tweak it manually, although I have found almost no images that require this. (There are some minor exceptions taken with very high ISO settings, where the noise got amplified until I tweaked the B&W conversion).

 

You can load an entire photo session into Camera Raw, select them all at once, and convert the whole batch to B&W with one click. Then, if you like, you can add a slight warming filter to the whole lot. Then you can pop back to Bridge and flip through all your images in B&W.

 

All done in a few seconds - without any damaging change to the .DNG files! Saving loads of time for the really hard work (dodging, burning, selective contrast etc etc).

 

 

PS Also with the new CS3 Camera Raw you can adjust the contrast curves right in the Raw converter too.