edit: if anyone wants to know how to make vibrant black and white photos out of colour photos, here’s what i do in photoshop cs2:

open a channel mixer adjustment layer (go to ‘layer’, then ‘new adjustment layer’, then check ‘use previous layer…’), check ‘monochrome’, then play around decreasing the red channel a bit, and add some blue and green. then open a levels adjustment layer under the channel mixer adjustment layer (under ‘layer’…), then tweak the levels. and then on the original picture layer, go to ‘image’ and then ’shadows and highlights’ to bring out more detail. and then if you wanna add back in some colour, just erase from the channel mixer layer (and probably up the saturation of that colour with another adjustment layer).