The Art of Black & White Photography - Part 2

Creating Monotones, Duotones, Tritone and Quadtones

Inglis Falls - Bruce Peninsula - Niagara Escarpment 

Same image as above but with a very slight Tritone effect applied - Subtle but noticeable.

This is a side-by-side comparison between the two.

Further to my previous post (The Art of Black & White Photography - Part 1), I went and created a Duotone version of this waterfalls image. Well, to be more accurate, a Tritone, which makes use of three separate colours as opposed to a Duotone which makes use of two. 

In Photoshop we also have the options for Monotone (one colour) and Quadtone (four colours) but this entire process is generally referred to as making Duotones - probably because that is the menu choice option in Photoshop and once you are in the Duotone colour space you can choose how which of the four colour options you want.

Now, there are some similar methods of creating these Duotone-ish images in Photoshop that don't require you to switch colour models but in my mind they are not as good - Split Toning, and there are a number of ways to go about this. I will cover this off in another article.

This gist of these faux duotones, as I call them, is to add a tint to the highlights and and different tint to the shadows, preferably complementary colours such as yellow in the highlights and blue in the shadows. For the most past, these methods will give you a satisfactory result but once you know that there is a better way to go about this with more control of your colours in the highlights, midtones and shadows, why would you use anything less?

Granted, making Duotones is usually a Graphic Designer or PrePress person's thing but that shouldn't stop you from using this method yourself. Using this method as opposed to the "Split toning effect" in either Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw's Develop Module or even using Photoshop's Adjustment Layers allows for control over where in the tonal range the colours get applied.

Unlike creating this look using either the Adjustment Layers methods or the Lightroom Develop Module or in Photoshop itself, Adobe Camera Raw or the Camera Raw Filter, creating duotones allows us to use some very specific colours. These colours or rather, books of colours (in the old days that would be the Pantone world of colours) are what graphic designers and pre-press individuals used when printing on a printing press. Many major companies have specific colours used in their logos; such as TD Green, Royal Bank Blue and Gold, CocaCola Red and so on. Using these specific colours means that no matter where the files are printed they will all come out looking the exact same. This is key. Using the "Faux Duotones" as mentioned above, there is no guarantee that the colours you choose will print they way you intended. More on this topic in a future article ...

Creating Duotones … Part 2

In the previous article (above) I discussed the benefits of creating duotones, tritones and quadtones and now I would like to show you how to go about making them.

The first thing we need to do is to is convert our full colour image into a black & white image. More specifically, we need to convert our full colour image into a Greyscale image because we cannot go directly to the Duotone option in Photoshop from a colour image.

So while still in full colour mode (RGB Color), convert your image to the best black & white version you can come up with.

Once that is done, go under the Image Menu and choose Mode > Greyscale.
Notice that the Duotone option is greyed out at this point.

At this point you will be presented with an alert box indicating that you would be better off choosing a better method of making a black & white photograph. Ignore this alert and choose Discard.

Now our image is a true Greyscale image containing just one channel named "Grey". All of the Red, Green & Blue channels are gone. Now go back under the Image Menu and choose Duotone.

In the Duotone Options dialog box there is a Presets drop down menu and a Type menu. Click on the Type menu and choose one of the four options - I chose Tritone because I want to have three colours in my black & white photograph.

As you can see here, in the Duotone Options dialog, at the very top, you have a Presets drop down menu and a Type drop down menu. By default they should read Preset: Default and Type: Black.

Clicking on the Presets drop down menu, you can see that Photoshop ships with a number of presets. Scroll around is you like but come back to the Default option please so we can continue together.

During your experimenting with different inks and the number of different inks, if you like a certain effect, you can save this effect as a Preset to call upon at a later date by clicking on the cog wheel to he left of the OK button and giving it a descriptive name.

In this Duotone Options dialog, there is only one ink colour; Black because we have the Type set to Monotone - we'll change this shortly but I want you to look at the black colour chip - to the left of this colour chip we see a white diagonal line - this is the "Curve" associated with this ink and clicking on this curve icon will bring up the curve dialog where we can set where and how the ink is distributed throughout the tonality of the image. Right now the black ink is set to go through the tonal levels evenly and gradually. In the next step we will change how the black ink is distributed.

In the image below, two things are noticeable; one, I have made some changes to the tone curve for the black ink and two, the overall image appears to be lighter - let's see how this plays out as we add more inks to the image.

In order to add more inks we need to change the Type from Monotone to to either Duotone, Tritone or even Quadtone. In this case I am choosing Tritone.

Now that I have chosen Tritone, you can see that there are a total of three inks available to me and the newer two have defaulted to white so we have to click on the white colour chip in order to choose a desired colour. As you can see below, this brings up the usual color picker dialog. Instead of choosing a colour here like we normally would, we are going to choose specific colours from the Color Libraries.

In the old days, we would have chosen something from a Pantone color book but it seems that Adobe is no longer supporting Pantone colors by default. But I am sure if you have access to some Pantone color books you can add them to your list of options.

So clicking on the white colour chip for ink 2, we see the usual color picker dialog. Since we want to choose specific colours, some would call these process colors, that will print the exact same way whether they are printed in Canada, USA, Mexico or Singapore, we will need to click on the Color Libraries button.

Notice the name of the dialog below the Duotone Options dialog - Color Libraries. Initially, your Color Libraries dialog may not look identical to mine because I have played around with this stuff and you may not have ... Regardless, where it reads "Book" in the top left, click on that arrow and choose TRUMATCH. In the middle of this dialog you will see a rainbow of colours from Red at the top and Grey at the bottom. Click in the medium blues to select a blue colour.

If you want to follow along exactly, try to find TRUMATCH 35-b4. If you find you are scrolling forever, just quickly type 35-b4 and it should show up.

Click OK and then click once on the Curve icon to the left of the blue colour chip to bring up the Duotone Curve for this colour. Change the 100% value to 60.

Do the same thing for a medium grey for ink 3. Type in 41-g7 to use the same shade of grey I am using.

Change ink 3's curve from 100% to 60 as well.

Below is the original Greyscale image

Below is the Duotone we just created.

Comparing the before and after versions of this image you can see that the final version has a bit of a "Cyanotype" look and feel to it. If you want a warmer look and feel to your prints than choose a warmer tone as apposed to the blue that I chose here.

Once you are done, convert your image back to RGB color by going Image > Mode > RGB Color and if you are sending this off to a photo lab convert the color profile to sRGB because that is what most photo labs require. That and probably save it as a "JPEG" as well. Some labs will take "TIFF" files but most will not.

If you are printing this on your own ink jet printer then leave it as an Adobe RGB 1998, TIFF file.

If you are preparing images to be printed on an offset printing press, talk to the press operator.