TIP: B&W Conversions Within Camera Raw

Photoshop's Camera Raw plug-in actually can do a pretty darn nice job for creating B&W conversions (see the B&W photo of Kira below which was all done just in Camera Raw). Start by opening a Raw image, then lower the Saturation to 0% to remove the color. Then adjust the Exposure and Shadow sliders to create a nice contrasty image, then drag the Contrast slider to right to make the image have even more contrast. Next, try all the different White Balance presets, until you find the one that looks best for your particular photo. You can even add Sharpening if you like, to create a surprisingly good B&W image before it even enter "regular" Photoshop.