PREPARING A COLOR PHOTOGRAPH FOR GRAYSCALE PRINTING
by D'Lynn Waldron,PhD c.2003

1) Prepare and save your image in RGB.

2) Change the Mode to grayscale. The image will be tonally 'flat', that is have little contrast in the midtones.

3) Make a duplicate layer.

4) Increase the contrast and decrease the lightness until the image has 'pop', which means modeling in the midtones.

If any important areas are blown (too light/and or no detail in the highlights) or blocked (too dark and/or too little detail in the shadows), you can erase away those areas in the top image, so the lower contrast bottom image can be seen. You have the option of completely erasing the area or using the eraser at less than 100%. You can pretest this by making a duplicate test layer of your top layer, turn off the visibility of one of these corrected layers and then adjust the transparency of the test layer. Set your eraser to the same transparency, restore the full transparency to that test layer and erase away the areas you want. If your erasing is not in the exact area you want, throw that test layer away and make another duplicate of the corrected layer and start again.

5) Save your layered image with a name like 'ImagenameGSLayers' in Photoshop.

6) Flatten image and save it with a name like 'ImagenameGS'.
(I save my flattened images as IBM Tiffs which can be read by both Mac and Windows.)