Nick, I am the least knowledgeable of the posters here who have wonderful expertise with imaging processing software like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and Elements, to name three.

Personally, I take the shot with little or no camera software optomizations. Generally, I have lately found that sharpening images is done better in software than in the camera, to avoid the "halo" effect between contrasty parts of the image.

As for color filters, I do not often use those on my digital camera and take the image in full color. Then, before converting to greyscale I do play with software which allows the image to show as greyscale and select various filter options, such as red, yellow, green, blue.
Once desaturated and converted to grey, the filters do little in my software, since it depends on the colors in the original to do the work...apparently.

I don't see the overall pixel quality degraded by filters, assuming I am using a COPY of the image and do not bother disturbing the original. I can copy the original often as I like and work on copies to see the results..to keep or discard with no effect to the original.

You might consider the optikverve labs "Virtual Photographer" plugin. This was a freebie last time I checked and has numerous and useful settings to mess with.

I generally use software color filters when shooting digital images. I do not depend on the camera for that since once the image is taken and camera settings applied, there is no way to back up. So, I take the full color shot with little camera image optomization and have the image to work with as I desire. Once shot and camera processed, that is all you can work with, whether over sharpened, greyscale or whatever. My simple opinion is shoot it for the best color image then go to software for changes. TomDart.

Message edited on: 06/20/2005 21:24