duotones

Like everything else in photoshop, there are several ways to accomplish a duotone.

The real deal, which is to say, the function that converts from grayscale to CMYK with specific pantone inksets (think lenswork) looks nice but probably isn't what you want, because the tonal response is altered in the process, and you sacrifice some color fidelity when you move to the CMYK color space.

Likewise, the gradient method is also interesting because it allows you to pick dissimilar colors and map them to the grayscale, which is useful for mimicking the look of a split toned image. You can run from purplish gray in the shadows to warm brown in the highlights, which is something you can also pull off with a combination of selenium and sepia toners. But that's probably not what you want either because, again, it's hard to get it to look good unless you already know what you're doing.

What you probably want to do is (working in RGB mode here) the simple color fill method. Add a new fill layer, of type Color Fill. Change the blending mode to "soft light" or "overlay." Specify the color in terms of Hue/Saturation/Brightness and try a hue of 40, a saturation of 16, and a brightness of 50. Then click okay.

If that's too much color tint for you, try backing down the saturation. If you want the highlights to be more affected, try changing the blending mode from soft light to overlay (note that you might have to change the saturation when you switch blending modes). If you want the tint to be warmer, try a lower number for hue.

Here's how to do the gradient and CMYK duotones if you want to play around some more.

For the gradient, start with a grayscale image and work in RGB mode. Pick a dark foreground color and a light, slightly tinted background color. Then go to image->adjustments->Gradient Map. You might have to check the 'reverse' checkbox if you mixed up your fg/bg colors. If you picked your colors wisely (maybe RGB 0, 0, 0 for the foreground and RGB 230, 220, 215 for the background) you should see a somewhat pleasant gradiation of tones where it was once from pure black to pure white.

Try playing with the gradient editor by clicking the drop down box next to the gradient for better control over the tonal transition, as well as some wild baked-in gradients. Some of them give an interesting solarization/sabbatier effect.

Lastly, the real deal, the CMYK duo/tri/quadtone. Start with a grayscale image, work in Grayscale mode. Go image->mode->duotone...

This duotone editor will give you an aneurysm unless you're a prepress wizard, so try loading some of the prefab duotone sets with the Load... button. Photoshop should show you the folder with all the built-in presets. I think the quadtones are particularly nice, some of the warmer ones give a nice effect. When you apply these sets, you'll notice that the brightness, contrast and gamma of your image is altered to match the ink set. That's the frustrating thing about this mode. Not only that, but in some cases the tones are clipped to match the CMYK colorspace...

After messing around with all of the above, I've stuck with the simple method of adding a solid color layer. It's tried and true. 🙂
 
I think I add a duotone (quadtone really) to 75%+ of all my finished scans.
 
tetrisattack said:
...

Lastly, the real deal, the CMYK duo/tri/quadtone. Start with a grayscale image, work in Grayscale mode. Go image->mode->duotone...

This duotone editor will give you an aneurysm unless you're a prepress wizard, so try loading some of the prefab duotone sets with the Load... button. Photoshop should show you the folder with all the built-in presets. I think the quadtones are particularly nice, some of the warmer ones give a nice effect. When you apply these sets, you'll notice that the brightness, contrast and gamma of your image is altered to match the ink set. That's the frustrating thing about this mode. Not only that, but in some cases the tones are clipped to match the CMYK colorspace...

After messing around with all of the above, I've stuck with the simple method of adding a solid color layer. It's tried and true. 🙂
Click to expand...

Conor this is the method I use, but I can never seem to find how to save the image as a jpeg. It usually only will allow a .psd option. 😕

.
 
Ya, this is great! That's exactly the look I was wanting in some of my photos, but had no idea how to get it in Photoshop. I'm really PS illiterate. Finally figured out it was the elusive Duotone when I pm'd Rich and asked how the heck he got that look in his photos.

Here's a before and after using tetrisattack's first method:

*Before*
01-06nokton50.jpg


*After*
DT0106-kc4.jpg


Eureka! 😀 It seems to add some depth, and I prefer the warmth it gives, too. So how do you get this in wet printing? Just a sepia tone?
 
i have been playing a bit with duotones in photoshop.
i started out being influenced by the warmer tones that i have seen here but i think i prefer the look of the colder tones that i have been playing with.
i still don't know what the heck i'm doing yet though.

joe
 
Joe..

Here's what my action does:
1) Image converted from whatever format it is in to grayscale (Image => mode => Grayscale)
2) Convert to duotone (Image => mode => Duotone)
3) For the "inks" I'm using Black as ink 1 and Pantone DS 43-9 C from the pantone process coated pallette in PS
4) apply
5) Convert to RGB (Image => mode => RGB)

The first photo is no duotone added
The second is with duotone added.

Dave
 

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Timely... just this morning Tim Grey's DDQ had this:

Tim Grey said:
There are only a few file formats (and really Photoshop PSD or Photoshop EPS are the only ones I would tend to use) that you can use for duotone images (images that you can think of as being like a grayscale image produced with two colors, such as black and red, instead of one, such as just black). Fortunately you can preserve the appearance of the image and enable it to be saved in any image file format by simply converting the duotone to an RGB image. To so, simply select Image > Mode > RGB from the menu.

As an alternative, you can create the same appearance in your image without going through the whole duotone process by using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Create that adjustment layer, check the Colorize checkbox near the bottom-right corner of the dialog box, and slide the Hue slider to choose the color you want to apply to the image in a duotone style. Fine-tune the Saturation slider to get the desired intensity of the color, and click OK when you're done. The image will then look the same as using a similar color in a duotone process while keeping the image in an RGB format that can be saved in any of the available image file formats.
Click to expand...
You can subscribe to Tim Grey's DDQ here: http://www.timgrey.com/ddq/

I use an even simpler method to tone images: Col Bal. Just pull a bit of red then a bit of yellow to a greyscaled RGB image until you get the tone and warmth you like, e.g.:

198851142_43fcb25f96_o.jpg


Gene
 
Last edited:
I am not very literate, but if I understand coorrectly, with duotone (or rather tritone, which i use), you do not end up colorizing the entire image. With the settings I use, the shadows stay black, the midtones are on the brown side, and the highlights get a hint of orange or yellow. I prefer this method as I preserve the black shadow.

I think it gets more complicated when you print (and would appreciate any info regarding this). Otherwise, once you have done it, you can just save it as an action.

I am lazy. The only thing I do is crop, adjust levels, then hit an action button which goes through sharpening and resizing in two or three stages, grayscale, duotone, and rgb conversion. 🙂
 
Actions are recorded macros, and I'm sure PS7 has them. I swear I was using them with version 4 or whatever the school used when I was a wee little lad.

Equipped with the right set of actions, you almost don't even need to think about editing your work anymore. Your photos will practically edit themselves! No need to labor over your work or put too much creativity into it.

But seriously, it's a good way of automating a duotone. I had an excellent tutorial written out here but I screwed up and closed the window and lost the whole thing -- so now I'll just post a link to a tutorial considerably longer than my own:
http://user.fundy.net/morris/?photoshop21.shtml

Okay. I need to quit loading RFF before work/school, it always makes me late.
 
Rich Silfver said:
I think I add a duotone (quadtone really) to 75%+ of all my finished scans.
Click to expand...

I've been trying a number of different ways. Luminosity masks with color balance layers and Layer Style Blending Options, Solid Color adjustment layers, Duotone, etc. Some seem to work more to my liking than others but I haven't found the one that I really like yet. Like someone said here, there are any number of ways to do it. Check out www.computer-darkroom.com and www.retouchpro.com for some nice tutorials.

I don't know what colors you are using Rich, but your images always seem to have a really nice rich tone.
 
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