Converting to Grayscale???

On all of my B&W's I just use the "convert to grayscale" in Paint Shop Pro.
I always see posts on "how to convert to B&W" and "how to get B&W right".............

Am I doing something wrong or losing some of my picture by just doing the simple "convert to grayscale"?

Depends on the picture, but yes, sometimes you lose a little. In my experience, midtone-heavy photos lose even more contrast when converting to black and white by just using a mode change.

It's the nature of black and white . . . taking up to 400% total color and cutting it down to 100%. To combat this, either use an alternative method to find the best channel for contrast, or open up the midtones before converting to black and white, then adjust contrast after the fact to your liking. Or . . . if you like what you are getting with PSP, then don't change a thing!

See this thread.

I like what I get But sometimes mine look a little more Gray & White instead of B&W.......I'll have to tweak a few more things and get the feel for a "Good" B&W conversion!

Thanks....

I get that problem a lot. It really helps if the original capture has a lot of dynamic range. When you convert to mono, you'll have less tones representing the data in the image. You could also take a look here.

This B+W conversion tutorial I've written is geared towards Photoshop and PS Elements users, but some of it may be applicable to PSP.

http://www.phototakers​.com/forum/ftopic37649​.html

Convert to Lab-colors. Your image software will produce three separate images. Then take the L version.

P.

Why bother doing that? If you're after the L channel, just desaturate the image - either way, you land up with the luminance data.

The use of the Channel Mixer in Photoshop provides more control over the resulting black and white image - somewhat akin to the use of coloured filters when shooting black and white film.

David