Digital BW, The Print

> ... LightZone from http://www.lightcrafts.com. 
> Doing B&W conversions is the best I have experienced. When you click to
> convert to B&W it shows a colour wheel and you just select the filter
> that you want. Beautiful! 
> It is by no means a replacement for CS2 or
> Lightroom/Aperture but it has a place I think.

LightZone is well worth a look if you tend to think in Zone-System terms. Among other 
things, it allows you to lock or adjust specific zones ("Zone Mapping", they call it) --- for 
example, you might "lock" Zone 3 where it is and then "expand" Zone 6 upward, resulting 
in more midtone separation while keeping low tones where they were. It is done by 
"sliding" zones up or down on a grey-scale ruler.   I find the zone-rule approach easier to 
think about than adjusting a response curve, especially since the Zone Mapper function 
shows the zones on a "map" of the image as well, so you can easily see what you are 
affecting.

All of the adjustments can be turned on and off, so converting to B&W, like everything 
else, is "non-destructive" as people say.

BTW, it does a really good job at "relighting" shadows --- something that is important to 
me, since my most common subjects are black dogs!

I use a Mac, and own CS3, LightZone, RawDeveloper, Expression Media (formerly iView 
Media Pro), GraphicConverter, Aperture, Lightroom, , Photomatix Pro, Autopanopro, and 
(recently) DxO Optics Pro.   I use only the first five regularly.