Which is more popular, the beautiful black and white pics where you have to imagine the colors and use a great deal of imterpitation, or color film and looking at the diversity of the colors in pictures, and seeing how amacing the world of color can be?

i think most ppl on here use digital (barring photoimagery) so i think everyone would shoot in colour, then desaturate to get the right ballance if they wanted a monochromatic image. i think it takes alot more talent to make a good monochromatic image tho, colour can make anything interesting, but good B&W looks awesome

That is true, i keep forgetting that most of these pics aren't taken with film, and i haven't found anything that makes very good B&W pics on the computer. well i guess that puts a new view on my idea, hah.

One can produce a great B&W image from digital by converting the RGB image to grayscale, isolating the luminosity and separating out the color. The technique lets you "dial in" a perfect grayscale photo almost every time.

huh????? dont understand, i have not a bad way of putting a grey image ontop of the image, with a blending mode of luminosity, or saturation or something (forget what it is) then using chanel mixer, and curves to get the right scale. put your way into more laymans photoshop terms

well.... im not really sure what all that means, i dont like digital pics at all(no offense, i like them, but not taking them myself, i like developing them). i guess with my inability to cope with the standards of photography in this day in age, i didn't really know that you could make good B&W pictures digitaly. i guess you can. i think im getting off-toppic, i was seeing what people like better.

Converting color images to B&W in Photoshop CS:
(It might work in other versions as well, but I have only tested it in CS)

Step 1: Open image and go Image>Mode>Lab Color

Step 2: Go to your channels palette and you will see that the luminosity (Lightness) has been separated from the color data (a and b).

Step 3: Now, click on the "Lightness" channel to make it active, and then go: Image>Mode>Grayscale. It will ask if you want to discard the other channels, click OK.

Step 4: Look at your channels palette, there will only be a Gray channel. Go to the Layers palette, click on the background layer, then press Ctrl. J to duplicate the background layer. Switch the blend mode of the duplicate layer from Normal to Multiply.

Step 5: Chances are the image looks to dark now, don’t worry, it gets fixed in this next step. You can "dial in" your ideal tone and fix the "too dark" look by lowering the opacity of the Multiply layer until you have the tonal balance you are looking for.

Both the above method and the Calculations feature are the preferred methods used by most pros.

I have set up a custom action to do this for me, and it seems to produce the best results so far.

could you send me the custom function you set up? that would be a handy tool that would save a long time quite often. carldyck@gmail.com then i'd just stick it in the right folder, and i'd figgure out how to use it.

Will, Thank you I was about to pm you to work up a tutorial on that since I havn't been able to get the right tones or depth that I wanted.
Mark I think you want to decide what it is you want to emphasize in the picture. It's just personal preference, but I like architecture and shadow in B/W. Things where you want someone to look at line and form. For instance a tree in color will have someone looking at the varied color of the leaves, while in B/W the eye might be drawn to the shape of the branches.

Anyone who wants the Photoshop custom action file for converting color images to B&W the correct way, email me at brphoto@shaw.ca and I will send it to you.

you just about need to make a tutorial now then you'll have like 10-20 requests/day for the .atn thanks for it it works awesome to make a colour into a b&w really fast and nicely