Photoshop Tutorial : Creating A Duotone Image

By Jennifer Farley | Dec 4 2007 |

In today’s video tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a duotone image in Photoshop. Duotone is the generic name for multitone printing, which can be done with two, three or four inks. You see this effect most often with a warm yellow-brown colour applied to a photograph to achieve a sepia effect. However, you’re not limited to just sepia, you can choose any colour you like. As well as being a very nice effect, duotones can save you or your clients money if you need to get some professional printing done. The fewer colours you use for printing, the cheaper it will be. So Duotones can help you stay within a smaller budget while having some lovely images in your work. Even if you’re not printing, the effect still looks great!

The steps to create a Duotone in Photoshop are very straightforward: Firstly convert your colour image to greyscale, then convert to duotone and choose the colours you want to work with. In the video, I explain how to use the Duotone dialog box and adjust the curves associated with each colour and also how you can also choose to use some of the preset duotones that come with Photoshop.

Comments

2 Responses to “Photoshop Tutorial : Creating A Duotone Image”

Angela on December 5th, 2007 3:47 am

Thanks! That was really easy to follow!
Alan on December 5th, 2007 6:04 pm

For the best results from a Duo-tone its best to use a RGB file, more colours! = more shades. makes sense really.

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