Silver Efex Pro is really good software for creating beautiful black and white conversations. I use it as a plugin for Adobe Lightroom 3 and have been very happy with this set up, it works seamlessly without any problems at all.
After processing to black and white I save the finished image as a TIFF file and it is then automatically re-imported back into the Lightroom catalogue to sit alongside the original.
It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use. Sam Abell
I particularly like the array of tools available, giving the opportunity to be as creative as you wish. There are a number of preset conversions that can act as a starting point, though I prefer to do each conversion singly and take each on its own merit.
Whilst I have not used them on these images the choice of borders is also a big benefit, they can be added directly in Silver Efex Pro therefore saving the need to go into Photoshop to add a border.
Here are a number of recent images that I have used Silver Efex on.









