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A post from a newbie here.
I have used this on my black and white images and this seems to be a quick and easy way to give them punch, without resorting to the use of channels.

1. Open your image - make sure that black is set to the foreground & white as the background and go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate

2. Duplicate the background to give you a copy - drag the background thumbnail in the layers palette to the 'create new layer' icon and release

3. With the background copy active in the layers palette, go to Image > Adjustments > Invert

4. Still working on the background copy, go to, Filter > Distort > Diffuse glow - the settings that work best seems to be Graininess = 5, Glow Amount = 10, Clear Amount = 15

5. Again still on the background copy - go to Image > Adjustments > Invert

6. In the layers palette set the blending mode to Multiply, then reduce the opacity to between 40% - 50%

7. And viola - you should have a punchier image - to check the difference turn off the background copy and if you like the result flatten the image /crazy.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='(crazy)' />

A nice, easy tutorial; thank you togarth

Here's my try at it:

[attachment=1966:attachment]

Thanks for the reply Tami - looks good to me - I'm currently working my way through your very helpful tutorials too - tahnsk for those