Nik Silver Efex
Just ran across this interesting post on a plug-in for Photoshop called Nik Silver Efex. Check out the video demo on the blog page.
It looks like it has gathered in one place a lot of really great tools for B&W conversions.
I’m a little bummed that this is a Photoshop plug in, however. First, I’ve pretty much moved away from Photoshop for everything except printing (and I’ll ditch that too as soon as I can find something that gives me good enough control over that). The way of the future is not in Photoshop–it’s really showing it’s age now.
Red Skies at Night 
I’m not sure I agree that Photoshop has become dated but I do recognize that it is not for everyone. Just to give you a heads-up, Silver Efex is also available for Elements as well as Apple’s Aperture.
Jeff
Jeff,
That’s a good sign that it’s available for Aperture. Is there a Lightroom version in the works, or does Lightroom have the ability to run Photoshop plug-ins?
Photoshop may be showing it’s age for general photo processing and touch ups but if you need to do serious edits or combine multiple shots there really is nothing better.