The other night, I upgraded to the most current version of Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2. LOVE this conversion plug-in. My aim was to take selected photos from my recent Washington vacation (April 2012) and convert them to black and white.
This software has a lot of very cool presets of which I made ample use, then tweaked here and there with my own changes. One of the things that popped out immediately is how much black & white delineates texture, light, dark, shadow, and detail. I saw things that I never noticed with the color images. This is especially apparent with photos that have lots of clouds.
I’m also pleased with my black and white conversions of people and pet photos.