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Don't know whether anyone can help, but I remember catching sight of a small article (some months ago) in one of the digital magazines in the UK.
It dealt with the "Zone System", made famous by Ansel Adams, and a technique that included adding a Gradient Map Filter set to "Grey Value Stripes". It was something to do with either visualising, or producing great B&W prints using this Grey Value Stripes Gradient Map.
Now, I'm still kicking myself for not buying the mag, but if anyone knows anything about it, I'd appreciate some more info 
Thanks all!
Matt
I seem to think it was something like this:
Image>Adjustments>gradient Map.
Dropdown the gradient map and hit the > then select load gradients and special effects is the file you are after.
Its the first map on that I think.
Chris
Oh and if you use Virtual photographer(its free) there is an "anvil" filter on there that does the same thing for you.
Sorry Matt - you've lost me by "details of the technique" are you talking about how to take the shot? All I remeber from the article in digital photo was: take the pic and apply the gradient. I'll see if I can find it in my back issues tonight.
Chris
Matt if you are using film you place the zone that is the most important and use that for the exposure and then adjust the development of the film,to make a zone stick I used a medium toned wall and each image i took i ajusted the aperture from white no detail all the way through to Black hope this makes sense then develope the film and make your self a zone stick as i called it.
Pauline.
Is the technique that was raised a couple of weeks ago more applicable, i.e for digital expose for the white. Set the exposure such that the levels histogram has as much data to the right as possible, without clipping.
There is one problem I found with this. I did some photo's under artificial light and the histograms in camera looked ok, but when I opened it in the RAW editor I could see that the red was over exposed. Anyone else notice this?
Thanks for your comments folks! Still not what I was looking for though! Let me explain a little more:
There was an article about creating B&W with Photoshop, and one of the points touched on Ansel Adams and the zone system. They showed how you could use the Grad.Map with the Grey Value Stripes to either (a) visualise the zones, or (b) achieve a good B&W - I can't remember the details of the article. I just remember reading it, thinking "Oh yeah, got that!", getting back and finding out that I hadn't!!
John - regarding red "overexposure" you may well find that it's not overexposure per-se, but a colour gamut problem. If you use Adobe RAW to convert to sRGB colour space, it's really pathetic at its rendition of reds. The colour space "can't hack it"! Either use AdobeRGB or ProPhoto and your reds will be just fine! Then edit within PS. Just remember that you'll need to convert to the sRGB colour space before using the save for web option 
I'll have a trawl through my stack of camera mags tomorrow and see if I can find it for you. It is ringing a bell with me so you might be lucky.
Matt,
I've fopund the article in Digital photo I was thinking of. If you send me a mail (chris AT shepherdpics.com) I'll send you a scan of it. Affraid I've given away the tutorial diskk though!
Chris
Well Matt Ive looked through most of my magazines and a very distracting couple of hours it has been.
The answers to many of my difficulties with Photoshop have been there in my magazine rack all along.
Practical Photography of May 2004 mentioned the Ansel Adams zone system.
It reads and I quote:
The tones within a standard scene range from the darkest shadow (black) to the brightest highlight (pure white).
Adams divided the areas into 11 zones, each being roughly equivalent to 1 stop with the darkest zone 0 and the brightest zone X. (using Roman numerals)
A grey card, falls into zone v (5) of the scale.
The easiest way to use the zone system is in conjunction with your grey card, metering off both this and your subject to find your subjects midtone. This will then be classified as zone 5 and you can work off this point to determine into which other zones salient points of your subject fall, and so expose correctly for all the important tonal areas.
Chris: which issue of Digital Photo was it in? I have all the free discs on my bookcase.
Chris kindly emailed me the details from June 2004 issue of Digital Photo, pages 64-67.
However, the suggestion from Barrie Thomas was just to place a Gradient Map set to "Grey Value Stripes" to get the zone system. Yet, whenever I try this it (obviously) posterises the image horribly.
However, what I have been doing is to temporarily place the gradient map on a layer and use the results to help me adjust the curves and levels of the underlying image to maximise tonal range. It ends up being a good way to visualise. I've used this technique on my little series of gig shots in black and white.
If anyone can give me any other pointers, I'd appreciate it though
Matt
I've just done a google on this topic and it came up with lots of sites but the one the various forums kept mentioning was this one
All a bit above my head but maybe you can make some sense of it all Matt.
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