Michael Freeman is an author I respect both for the quality of his technical writing and for his skill as a photographer. He is a well-known and popular author on digital photography, writing about digital B&W, HDR, photographic composition, night photography, etc.

There are some excellent choices for books on converting color photos into B&W fine art images. John Beardsworth's Advanced Digital B&W Photography and Michael Freeman's Mastering Black and White Digital Photography are favorites of mine for B&W conversion tips and techniques.

I own more than one shelf of books related to digital photography. Advanced Digital Black & White Photography by John Beardsworth is oneof the few books that I am confident will improve the digital B&W photography of anyone who reads it, whether complete novice or seasoned photo retoucher.

My tip Quick & Easy Sepia Tone Effect tip demonstrated my personal favorite for making a sepia tone image. It uses a twist on a popular method of B&W conversion that uses a pair of Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. This week's tip will go a bit further with toning. We'll use Image | Adjustments | Variations to alter the tone. You'll soon see, you have a lot more options than sepia, too.

There are a number of ways to create a sepia tone effect in Photoshop. This one is my personal favorite. It uses a twist on a method of B&W conversion. What I like about this technique is that is is fast and easy and you have a lot of control over the result.

The TLR Sepia Tint has been reworked for Photoshop CS3/CS4.

The action starts with a basic B&W conversion with a Channel Mixer adjustment layer. Then a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer is added for the sepia tint. Both layers are placed in a Layer Group.

You can optionally add a sophisticated film grain effect. There are three levels of grain to choose from. The film grain actions uses the same technique found in the TLR Film Grain Effects actions.

Duotones, tritones, and quadtones use spot color inks and multiple passes on a printer. They are expensive to produce because of the separate plates and press washes. Photoshop has a duotone mode. Printing these images on an inkjet printer results in a pseudo-duotone. These can be very lovely images and nearly indistinguishable from a true duo/tri/quadtone.