Lesson 3 - Duotones

Duotone is both a type of printing as well as a generic term for color separated and sepia toned images. The origins of duotone printing are from printers that used two different ink colors, one of which was usually black. It was an addition to halftone printing and allowed an image to have color without increasing production costs. Most color newspaper, magazine and comics are printed in the same halftone format except they use several additional colors. Since prints are done in cyan magenta yellow and black those are usually the colors chosen.

In digital imaging there are many ways to separate color, but duotones are one of the most popular. This might be because they can imitate be used to imitate traditional black and white images or sepia toned images. One reason that many digital photographers like to use duotone printing is that it can actually improve the quality of a photo they wish to print in black and white. This is because most desktop printers cannot accurately print as many levels of black as photoshop can calculate. The addition of another color allows the printer to make images look much smoother and more accurate. The choice of color to use can also give the image a distinct feel, or style. For example I found that the addition of a light beige/brown to black gave me a realistic sepia toned image. Duotone can also make a convincing monochrome image on a desktop if a dark blue is chosen.

This image is a duotone created from two seperate images I found on the internet. I made a few color and level adjustments to the background image of the rainforest, but it's original other than that. I then cut out the girl with the umbrella from another image using the magnetic lasso, and magic wand primarily. I tried to use the refine edge and feather tools to give the edge a softer quality, but wasn't satisfied. I ended up using a soft edge eraser on the forground layer by hand, erasing to a transparent background. I was able to give it a soft uniform edge, without the unreaslistic feathering created by the refine edge and feather options. At this point I adjusted the levels, brightness and contrast on the forground to more closely match it to the background enviornment. Once I was satisfied with the compositing I went on to create the duotone by first converitng the image to grayscale and then to duotone. I chose a teal and brown color set for my duotone and adjusted the contrast, color balance and levels accordingly. I thought of going back and adding some shadows to the umbrella, but for now I am happy with the results.

Matthew Williams