I was wrong earlier when I described a B&W conversion technique as being provided by Caponigro. This is the one provided by Caponigro:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/ps_pro_primers.html -- see the link "Black and White Conversion Tutorial" (PDF file).
The technique involves copying and pasting the individual R, G and B channels into the main document, creating a new layer each time you paste. I've tried it a number of times in Photoshop CS2 and haven't been able to get it to work. With each "paste," the new layer that appears in the document contains the data only for the very
first channel that was copied. That is, if I first paste the Red channel, at the point when I've copied and pasted the Blue channel, it's still only the red-channel data that appears in the new layer. The same happens when I copy and paste the green-channel data: again I get only the red-channel data in the new layer.
I've been following the instructions slowly and meticulously -- or so I thought -- but clearly I'm doing something wrong. Can anyone reading this message think what it might be? Or, is it possible there's something missing from those instructions?
The web page contains a Photoshop action that's said to automate the sequence of events described in the tutorial. That isn't quite correct. The action does considerably more than is described in the tutorial. When it is run, the channels when pasted into the main document
DO look the way I would expect them to look.
(I realize that Silver Efex Pro is a mere $200. Despite the bargain pricing, I would nevertheless like to find some other workable approach, if possible. To date, Convert to B&W Pro having been discontinued, I have not yet found a decent plug-in for this purpose...)