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Converting Colour to Monochrome. Basic conversion methods:
In Photoshop there are a variety of ways of converting a colour image to a monochrome one: 1 Grayscale method -
Simply select 'Image' > 'Mode' > 'Grayscale'
This removes all colour information & results vary with different images. What you get is what you are stuck with. This is not recommended for all but the quickest test conversions.
2 Hue / Saturation
Select 'Image' > 'Adjustment' > Hue/Saturation' and move saturation slider all the way to the left to de-saturate the image.
Results are very similar to taking a scene with monochrome film without using any filters. The image appear slightly flat and colours tend to appear the same shade of grey despite their original colour. Again not recommended except for a quick conversion.
3 Lab Colour
Select 'Image' >'Mode' > 'Lab Colour' once selected then go to the channel window.
Click on the 'lightness' channel to select only that channel, this is because the colour information is contained in the A and B channel. To save the section convert the image back to a 'grayscale' (image >'mode > grayscale) image then to an 'RGB' (Image > Mode > RGB).
A vast improvement on the previous two methods and although a popular basic method for conversion it would not be my chosen method as what you get is what you are stuck with.
4 Channel Mixer
Select 'Image' > 'Adjustment' > 'Channel Mixer', then tick the monochrome box in the pop up window.
The default setting will be Red 100%, Green 0% and Blue 0%, which is the image on the left. By playing about with the values of the three channels you replicate the use of coloured filters in monochrome darkroom. The image on the right was Red 50%, Green 50%, Blue 0%. It is advisable to keep the total value of the three channels at 100% however small variations can be used without loss of quality. You can play about with the three channels until you are happy with the image then hit OK.This is, in my opinion, the best way of converting a colour file to monochrome using the basic methods, however there are more advanced methods which can be used to produce a more professional result. These use more advanced techniques and take more time to produce but the results in my opinion are worth it and can produce results close to that of a conventional darkroom print.
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