Black and white in color

[Gare]

Although the giants such as Ansel Adams used duotones to enrichen, to draw out detail in their work, duotones can also add an element of novelty to the picture. For those of you who are unfamiliar with duotones, they are two plates used to print a monochrome photo. Today, the digital process produces the plates as channels, for example in Photoshop--you save the file to EPS format and the printer's computer software does the seps. Photoshop comes with a ton of duotone presets which are actually ink distribution curves. One I like to occasionally use is a sepiatone, a combo of brown and black inks are used to print. The effect is more subtle than using Hue/Saturation's Colorize command. At any time using Photoshop 6 or later, you can convert the file's mode to RGB so you can save the image and print to any inkjet.

I found a toy a few years ago called Powertone. Sadly, the manufacturer Creo-Scitex (who distributed through Intensesoftware)was snapped up by Kodak and can't really find an outlet for this plug-in even after an exhaustive Google searvh. If anyone stumbles across it, please post a link here.

Powertone's claim to fame is that by using sophisticated ink distribution curves, you can reduce an RGB image to two color plates, and the result can be quite arresting. I believe Powertone's intended use was/is for doing simulated four-color on a two-color budget, but I got interested in it as an artistic tool. It was $600--a tad steep for frivolous experimentation--but again, if you can find it, it's legacyware and will probably be at a fire sale price.

I'm using the red plate/blue plate preset here. Portrait photography can be a little unflattering as a Powertone, but I wanted to show you all worst-case.  I've got a lot of still lifes that came out splendidly. Believe it or not, the image at right was expressed using only two plates.Creo-Scitex also made Silvertone, which is great for establishing auto-distribution for a combo of silver and black inks, very traditional, very artsy.

My Best,

Gare

[geden3]

Hey Gare,

I've have used duotones for some things but just did my own custem curves.  I just now played around with some of the actions.  Also the tri  and quadtones.  Very interesting. They work really good and if you want you can even modify an action curve to make some more custom ones of your own.  Very cool.  Thanks for the tip 

Regards
Gary

[Gare]

Hi, Gare--

So I take it you're converting the images to RGB when you're done doing duo/tri/quad tones? Or are you having them commercially printed?

For beginners in our group, two and three-color plate jobs such as duotones are not in RGB color mode..they have their own unique color channels as digital files your inkjet printer will not understand. Generally, these channels are written to plates, similar to how CMY, and K plates are pulled from channels after color conversion. Therefore, you opt to get a similar color effect, although not as rich as a printed duotone, by going to RGB then printing the file.

My Best,

Gare

[geden3]

I've just been converting them back to RGB.  Digital printing using these techniques are very new to me right now.  I've always printed from a negative by a photo lab.  Haven't tried the digital printing route yet.  I'll remember this if I try and print a duotone print from a digital file.

Regards
Gary