Mark: When I first switched from film and a wet darkroom last year, I worked with Photoshop Elements and Silver Efex Pro, relying heavily on the SEP pre-sets. The pre-sets were great in that they simplified my process as well as revealing to me many of the potentials lurking in my various digital images. This year, however, I've wanted to get away a bit from the "crutch" of the SEP pre-sets and start to manipulate my captures on my own, somewhat from scratch (from the ground up, so to speak). I turned to Lightroom (which was then within my budget), and even though LR has its own pre-sets, I didn't really use them. Now I'm considering exploring some of the more advanced tools for black-and-white processing which a full version of Photoshop (CS5) might offer, beyond those available in LR. Hence, my initial query regarding ACR and how much I need to process in RAW color before moving on to black-and-white. My question has been today very well answered in this forum, thanks to you and your fellow experts. I am now much clearer to how to proceed herein. Thanks again, and regards, Jim