B&W conversion from RAW.

This is something I've been trying to acheive for a while. B&W conversion in at the RAW stage of the workflow. I mainly use C1DSLR for RAW images - will continue to do so for now until I get a faster computer as ACR 3.2 on CS2 is extremely slow on my 733MHz machine.

The problem with C1 has been that you can only reduce saturation to 30% so B&W conversion needs to be done in Photosop. Well DOP have come up with a workaround which looks quite good. Here is the link to the article at Digital Outack Photo. There is a profile to download for C1DSLR and some settings to emulate Tri-X film.

I'll experiment with this for a while and see how it fits in with my workflow. Might just save me US$100 that I was going to spend on ConverttoBW pro.

Update 22/11/05...
Just bought Raw Shooter Premium. It is perfect for RAW to BW conversions. It also has a function to save "versions" of the image so you can save a colour and BW setting with each image. I'll post my techniques later but for now Capture one is out!

Check out these couple of links from the pixmantec forum:
1. Using QTR Lab Gray working space - allows use of the colour wheel as a colour filter.
2. Desaturation method - can't use colour wheel. Still lots of controls using WB, tone, curves, levels, contrast sliders etc. Good becuase you don't have to muck about using different colour spaces.

Update 6/11/06...
Now using Adobe Lightroom Beta 4 for all of my BW conversions.
It has an inbuilt greyscale converter with custom toning. Quick and easy, great results, and you get to work in a non destructive RAW workflow. Fantastic.