I have spent close to 50 years in the southwest desert and never really paid attention to the beauty of the saguaro cacti all around. I will continue to shoot and post interesting poses they give me.
Does anybody have well tested way of converting color to BW?

Please visit the following site for more information on the Saguaro.

http://photosbymikeaz.blogspot.com/
www.photosbymikeaz.com

Hi Mike...... there are several different ways..... depends on the picture (just what you wanted to hear, huh....):) ..... you could use:

Channel Mixer with monochrome checked then adjust the sliders

or

Convert to LAB color and choose the Lightness Channel

or Desaturate..... or Grayscale ...... or Grayscale with a Duotone tint..... etc.....

How about posting a colored picture and letting us play around with it..... btw.... I love the photo....

Beth

ps.... you could also download (free) Virtual Photographer if you're wanting some different looks without having to spend a lot of time ..... http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

Adobe CS3 has some great new tools for converting to B/W. They have an enhanced smart filter similar to channel mixer simply called "Black and White" Instead of only three channels it gives you 6 channels (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta) for adjusting tonality.

Here’s a link to a Russell Brown video tutorial using the new Black & White conversion in CS3
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/DrBW_SM.mov

Here’s another one using LAB and includes image toning
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/PhotoTonerSM.mov

Here’s my favorite and the most fun to play with.
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/ColortoBW.mov

Thank you for the responses, I will post the original photo on Sunday.

Here is a untouched photo
Please make changes

Here's a Mike Warren Dragan action......

If you have CS3 and Adobe Camera Raw 4.2, you can change luminance values for different colors - lightening the brush, darkening the sky or vice-versa. Then you can play more with the black/white adjustment layer to get various effects. I just went the opposite directions that solitear went to give a different view.

I'm an Arizonan also -- I've looked at your website before - nice images.