Digital BW, The Print

I've been very pleased with Convert to B&W Pro from The Imaging Factory 
- http://www.theimagingfactory.com/.  It's a Photoshop plug-in that lets 
you apply the equivalent of color contrast filters (continuously 
variable, and with adjustable intensity), adjust spectral response 
(including a number of presets to match several popular films), adjust 
"exposure", "enlarger time" and contrast (with steps from -1.0 to +5.0 
in 0.1 increments.)  For an old darkroom guy, it struck me as the most 
intuitive of the tools out there, although I recognize it's not doing 
anything I couldn't learn to do with Photoshop's adjustments.  There's a 
30 day trial available, if you're interested.

Cheers,
Kip

John M. wrote, in part:

><snip>
>
>Is the best route to immerse myself in techniques such as those 
>presented by Russell Brown, or are there truly good tools/software 
>that I should investigate as well?  I am interested in fine art 
>landscape images primarily.
>  
>