Digital Imaging and Photography → Advanced B & W conversion method.

An advanced but very effective method of converting images to B & W in Photoshop. The control you will have over an image is incredible.
**note** Link goes to a PDF file.
»www.adobe.com/digitalima ··· sion.pdf

Extremely interesting! Nice find.

This will take some experimenting, but you are right -- the control is tremendous. Thanks for the link.

Drat! I have no control nor PS. Nice link though.

JKK, you don't need PS for this method. PSP and GIMP should work just fine.

this is actually the only conversion I like to do for keepers.

from a while back

edit this,

can you post few samples.. also is it possible for somebody to create a PS action for this?

In the link ET provided in his post, there is a link to download an Action file that does automate the process:
»www.adobe.com/digitalima ··· ers.html
HTH

A fine example of why "straight conversions" are not so good.

Just tried this with PSPX and it works just great. The only thing, to get the channel breakdown, use Image > Split Channel > Split to RGB

here's the action I made, you get l.r.g.b. layers w/ masks.

Not bad. But the best way and reasonably fast as well is to master using a Channels Layer and master using curves and layer masks and then master Toning by Duotone/Tritone/Quadtone and using a custom curve on each tone color as well. It is a hard way to do conversions, but it is the only way I have seen or found to begin to come close to a true film type B&W. I have used this method along the way as well and it is one of the better ways, but still just doesn't get it where it should be.