After a visit to the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, I had this shot of a garage setting inside the museum. It was OK as a straight record shot, but did not convey the olde worlde feeling that I was wanting.
What I did was to start by altering the levels so that I got more contrast in the shiny metal of the car itself. next I painted a mask over the shape of the car. This allowed me to work on the rest of the image besides the car. I reduced the saturation to play down the bright colours. The whole scene seemed to me to have a more "colourless" atmosphere which I was trying to recreate in the image. The large green metal pillar in the foreground was not in keeping with the image so I cropped that out.
All that was left to do then was to put the image in a contrasting frame that made all of these changes stand out even more.
I think this sort of effect works well with most content that has an old feel, though some may suit a sepia toned effect rather than pure monochrome.