If like me you have often been disapointed with the results when converting a colour image to black & white, there are a couple of articles here from Sunlight and AngieD that you should read.

http://www.myfinepix.com/article/109/368567

http://www.myfinepix.com/article/83/366051

Until I saw these I desaturated & adjusted curves/contrast etc - but often to no avail. Thought a quick look at how I use Gimp to follow the advice in the afore mentioned articles may be of some interest. Its not as daunting as it may seem & it is FREE!!

So here's the colour image - it is an HDR processed through Photomatix (but thats another story)

By doing a simple conversion to B&W using the Gimp desaturate tool we get this

Further manipulation (& about the best I could do) provides this

A bit of an improvement? - but still not really what I would have liked. So here is where we use the channel mixer method in Gimp to follow the excellent advice from Sunlight & AngieD

Gimps channel mixer is found here:

Then its just a case of playing with the sliders

And the result:

Ok its not brilliant - but it is better, it only took about 10 minutes & with Gimp its FREE.

So if you want to have a go at following the articles I refer to, but don't want to invest in editing software then give it a go. It often comes up in the forums that Gimp is a bit daunting for the beginner - well all I can say is its the only editing software I have ever used from when I first started to edit my snaps.