[Cailean]

Converting a colour image to B&W (greyscale) is fairly straightforward even with the most basic photo-editing software. To get a really fabulous B&W photo, however, I think more finesse is required. Just playing with the brightness & contrast a little can make a huge difference...

So I have two questions for those of you who do this alot:

1) What techniques do you ALWAYS use when converting to B&W to maximize the effect?

2) What other techniques do you use when you want a specific effect?

(The less Photoshop-specific the answers, the better!)