Help converting to B&W

[Boynielaad]

I'm new to digital photography and, hence, new to processing.

I use GIMP as I'm not prepared to shell out on another expensive item as yet.

Here's a B&W conversion of my daughter.

And here's the original

It's clear to me that it could and should look better and it's obviously not simply a case of converting to grayscale.

Can anyone suggest what else I might do to the original to improve the image when it becomes B&W please?

Thanks in advance - I know there are some wicked processors in these forums.

 

[Rob_W]

'Fraid i don't know much about Gimp, i havent used it...

This is what i got out of Photoshop, just upped the levels, copied and pasted
the red channel. But dont know if any of that is possible in Gimp

 

[Boynielaad]

'Fraid i don't know much about Gimp, i havent used it...

This is what i got out of Photoshop, just upped the levels, copied and pasted
the red channel. But dont know if any of that is possible in Gimp

Thanks, I'll see if I can do something similar.