Gradient mapping
can you explain how to do this? sounds interesting
Process you image in a RAW processor (I would reccomend Rawshooter pro, now Ligtroom, but any will do) you can make your inital conversion to B&W in RAW or use the channels in PS. At this stage I concentrate on getting the largest range of tones I can, the image will often look rather flat.
take the image in PS.
Make sur your forground is set to black and background to white.
Go to layer; New adjustment layer, gradient map. Select color GREY and Mode as Soft Light (you can also try Hard light for this)
The gradient should default to a black to white graysacle, if it doesn't change it. You can also select dither, which can be usfull if later making a contact ngative, but I don't think it makes much difference for screen viewing or ink jet printing)
In the layer palette set the opacity at whatever 100% give you the highst contrast you want. Then you can use the paintbrush tool,set as a soft brush at whatever siz and opacity you choose (I usuall go for 10 -20%) to paint in or out contrast in the apropriate places.
You can add a second map above the first in Hard light to boost contrast even further.
Keep checking the Histogram to check that you are not creating any gaps (if you are working on a 16 bit image converted from RAW you shouldn't have a problem, however if you work on a 8 bit image it will be very destructive.
Save th image with the layers intact. Flatten the image, resize to yur output size, change to LAB mode, sharpen on the ligtness channel only, change back to RGB, convert to 8 bit and then save as a PSD with a new name. For web output, go to edit, convert to profile, choose sRGB and then save as a jpeg at around 8 -9.
There are many ways to do this, this one works for me and is as non destructive as it can be. I usually print on an pson 1290 using Lyson Quad black inks and various Hanemule papers. It dosn't fool me for a second that it is a real photographic print, but it does fool many!