Just wanted to share with you all a tutorial (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=20344142) that I posted here. Don't feel like retyping tonight. If you have GIMP, it's a quite powerful technique for b/w conversion. It takes advantage of transitional colors for gradient transitions (i.e., no need for dithering which causes those specs and contouring when desaturating photos; 1786 tones are better then 256). :)