Duotone

Introduction to duotone

A Duotone is basically a monochrome grayscale image which supports different colours for specific tone ranges. For example, instead of black or gray shadows you can have green ones. The same applies to highlights and midtones colours/ranges.

This tutorial was written for Photoshop - versions 6, 7, CS (8) and CS2 (9), but it can also be adapted to other versions and/or applications.

Step 1

Open the image you want to use in Photoshop.

Step 2

First, we must convert our image to Grayscale (Black & White so to speak). Go to menu Image > Mode > Grayscale.

Step 3

Your image will now have a pre-selected duotone: the well-known Black & White, but that’s not what we want…
Let’s go on!

Step 4

Now, go to menu Image > Mode > Duotone. As you might notice, the Duotone option is now unlocked.
This is due to our previous Grayscale conversion.

Step 5

As you click in Duotone the dialog below should appear.
Notice that it’s set to Monotone.

You can use this feature as:

• Monotone
• Duotone
• Tritone
• Quadtone

In this particular tutorial we’ll only approach the Duotone option as this one gives you simple but right directions to explore the other ones by yourself.

Step 6

Switch the type to Duotone.
You’ll then have 2 colors slots.

We advise you to always stick with the first one black if you want to get realistic results.
Of course you can always change both colors and get some phyco effects - pretty nice for abstract pictures.

Next, choose a second color by clicking the second sample slot.

Note: tick Preview if you want a real time view of your changes.

Click OK when you’re happy with the colors.

Step 7

To save this image for web (JPEG, GIF, PNG, etc.) you have to re-convert it to RGB color mode: go to Image > Mode > RGB Color.

The result

Here’s the final image obtained with Black and PANTONE Process Blue C as you might have seen.

Another example of duotone