[acomjean]

Many years ago I went to a photoshop conference to try and get better. There was a talk about converting color photos to black and white. As a former bw film photog this interested me. Black and white film is a little wierd (some people put red filters on the lenses to increase contrast)

He showed some techniques. I think someone asked a question about the best way, but the presenter got a little ranty and basically said the way that looks best to your eye is the best way.

[heliographe]

Yes, that makes sense to me. Black and white film is a very flexible medium - you can make very different prints from the same negative, it has lots of latitude to play with the contrast, dodge/burn, etc, so there’s not necessarily a single “best” interpretation.

And as you point out, at capture time you can use color filters to affect the image; processing too can lead to fairly different results based on what developer you use.

This is in contrast to color film, which I find to be much more rigid and narrow in how it’s meant to look and be processed; one could argue there’s much less range for interpretation from negative to final image (especially so with slide film, which completely falls apart if it’s ever so slightly over/under exposed).

[TheOtherHobbes]

The aesthetics of B&W are super complex and very variable, so the idea that there's a "best" option for a format that covers a huge range of possible effects is indeed unhelpful.

But it's still useful to have some of those effects catalogued and easily accessible as presets. Photoshop doesn't quite do that, which on the one hand makes it hard for beginners to get a good look, but also leaves some space for those who want to go deeper to get more creative.