As it turns out it is harder to do well that it might seem. I located 2 guide to helping with this process.
Black and White Conversion using Photoshop CS2. You can use the same concepts with any photo editing software.
Creating fabulous Black and White photographs from your color images is a little more complicated than hitting the ‘Convert to Grayscale mode’ or ‘Desaturate’ buttons in your image editing software...
Black and white conversions are radical transformations of images. They're about reestablishing the tonal foundations of an image. That's quite different than dodging and burning, or lightening and darkening locally, which is a matter of accentuating existing tonal relationships.
And here is a freeware Photoshop plugin that assists in the B&W modification (as well as other features).
