Here's a question for the photo geeks out there. I'm a fan of the black and white image. Often I'll see a photo as black and white as I'm taking it. Of course, I'm shooting digital, so I convert to black and white later.

And this is what I'm wondering; how other people do digital black and white.

This may not be the best image to convert. It is a little too mid tone heavy.
The first thing I do is mimic the effect of a light red filter. With Levels, Curves, or Channels, drop about half the blue and some of the green values. Then tweak overall contrast.
Finally, remove the color, and sharpen.

I think that altering color to improve contrast helps make the resulting black and white punchier. I think it certainly looks better than a straight black and white conversion.

simple conversion	altered colors

So what do you do with black and white photos?