Don, I posted this image in my gallery last night and I am not totally happy with the skin tone. I have the same problem with doing B&W's on my great niece and nephew, their father is Phillipine (sp). The problem is that their skin tones are a darker complexion. This particular one of Cali, her father is part Cuban so her skin tone is slightly dark. Maybe is it my monitor as I got the Black Screen of Death twice yesterday and my screen seems a little darker.

Any suggestions on doing B&W's on darker skin tones? With this one I did the edits (crop and gaussian blur 4.0 for softness) and conversion and then a contrast boost of 23 and dodged the eyes to lighten and bring out more. She has dark blue eyes and they same out almost black in the conversion.

Kim... I played.

did a levels adjustment first. Making sure to move the middle slider to the left.
I used the elliptical marquee tool and selected her eyes with a small feather.(3) Put them on their own layer and sharpened them. merged together.
duplicate layer again and changed the blend mode to soft light.
New layer and filled with brown. (3c2501) changed blend mode to soft light and lowered the opacity to 49%.

oh.. I used the patch tool on the areas around her mouth. Thanks for letting me play. I have been making myself do everything in CS.

What do you think?

Kimi, that looks great. I will give that a try later. I am doing a photo book with the photos from the family Christmas party that my hubby's Grandmother couldn't make it in for and she just adores Cali (she her Great Great Granddaughter and lives near her in Florida).

I too am trying to force myself to use CS3 but used PSE5 on this. Will redo it in CS3

Kim... I am still waiting on yours.

Kimi, I totally got side tracked working on the newsletter. I couldn't figure out how to use the patch tool so just used the healing brush around the mouth. I reduced the brown even more because even though I used the number you posted and reduced the opacity to 49% it was still too brown. So here it is. What do you think?

Thought I would post the original

very, very nice Kim

oh Kim... I think it is much improved over the first one.
She is such a cutie!
You did good!

I like your second one, Kim,

She's a real sweetie. Don't kids that age have great smiles!

Rusty

Thanks everyone.

Rusty, they do have great smiles at that age. I asked her if I could take her picture and she said yes and this was how she posed. Her hair is a mess as she was just running in circles to hear the bell around her neck jingle.