A Simple Muted Colour Technique in Photoshop

Black and white was always my favourite method of presenting images but now I like desaturated, high contrast colours and it couldn't be easier to achieve...

Photoshop has a number of  ways to do one thing but for me I prefer the Camera RAW processor. I simply dial down the saturation slider to 60% and bump up the contrast slider to 80%, reduce the clarity a little and you're done! The best thing about the RAW processor is you can batch process all or some of the images in one hit without having to create and  run an action. 
If you're more comfortable with Photoshop itself the 'old style' preset in the Hue / Saturation adjustment is another easy way to get a similar effect.