Awesome toned black and white portrait photos

[theadz]

Hi everyone,

Could someone help me figure out the post production efforts on the two black and white photos in this model portfolio. I think they look brilliant and my own black and white attempts just don't have this same tonal quality.

http://www.ozmodel.com.au/model/alintalaloba/index.php

Obviously I understand a lot comes from the lighting, I'm trying to work that out too.

Thanks.

[pixel_monkey]

What methods do you use to convert to b+w? I use a fews depending on the image. I tend to use channel mixer for portrait shots. Skin tones by nature fall in the red channel in a RGB file, so I up its percentage high in the equation to bring out its brightness and try not to have all 3 channels add up above or below 100. I also like to use calculations to blend different channels with different blend modes and the luminous channel in LAB mode. CS3 has a new b+w adj. layer that also works well. No matter which method you use, just stay away from converting your color images to b+w via grayscaling and desaturation.

[KR1156]

prob better off starting with the green channel, red equals cyan channel not much tonal range there. stay away from blue channel, it's usually a mess, like the yellow channel.

*but all depends on the shot. red can have some great info.