Black and White

I tried to turn a shot into b&w for a challenge submission, and no matter how much I played with it I wasn't quite happy. Mostly I was just decreasing the saturation to nothing. So last night I started looking at other peoples b&w shots, reading how they adjusted photos, finding some online tutorials, and I'll admit that most of the Photoshop lingo just flew right over my head. The only one I understood gave the basic premise that 'Photographers use a red filter over their lens to bring out good landscape colors and lighten blemishes if they intend to change a photo to b&w after shooting' and in essence all I needed to do was to add red tones to my shot before converting to greyscale.

So, I chose a few shots previously taken, adjusted the brightness/contrast as I felt necessary and then converted each to greyscale (saved) and then went back to add the red tones before converting it again (and saved). When I compared the shots, there was a noticeable difference, but I still don't know if it's just because the one with the red was darker or if it really had to do with the red tones. This particular shot (actually taken a year and a half ago) is of an old building I passed on a drive through Vermont. I think it came out the best of the shots I was converting. After spending so much time playing with Photoshop, I decided it deserved a place in my PaD, even if it is an old picture.

If anyone has a better (and easy to understand) way to convert an image to b&w, please point me in the right direction! Thanks! :)