Saturday, April 11, 2009

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Flamingo



Oakland bridge



Boy


Duotone
A Duotone is basically a monochrome grayscale image, which supports different colors for specific tone ranges. It's often uses in the printing world where a photograph is included in a publication and where the publisher wants to use some color on the page but not pay for full color printing. As a duotone, the image is created as a mix of two colors - hence its name duotone. Typically the colors are black and a spot color but they can be any two colors. We can convert a photo to a duotone in Photoshop using its Duotone feature and you can customize the duotone and determine just how much of each color is applied to the image.
Here's how to convert your photo into a duotone in Photoshop:

Step 1.
Open our photo in Photoshop and apply any desired adjustments to it - concentrate more on developing pleasing contrast in the image than on the colors because in the next step we will be removing the color.
Step 2.
Create a black and white version of the image. Typically selecting Image > Mode > Grayscale does this. The problem with this conversion method is that you don't get the chance to determine how the image is converted and it is often a lackluster result. We can do better by converting the image yourself using a specialist black and white conversion tool - in Photoshop. To do this, choose Image > Adjustments > Black & White and drag the sliders to create your custom black and white image. Then choose Image > Mode > Grayscale and click Discard to discard the color.
Step 3.
Now go to menu Image > Mode > Duotone. As we might notice, the Duotone option is now unlocked. This is due to our previous Grayscale conversion. When Duotone Options dialog -box appears, from the Type list select Duotone. The first Ink color defaults to Black and you can now add a second ink color by clicking in the swatch box. Begin 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 psycho effects - pretty nice for abstract pictures.
Duotones are typically used in commercial printing, you are offered a choice of colors from a Pantone color swatch. If you aren't printing commercially and if you prefer to use the color picker, click the Picker button and select a color this way - type a name for it in the text area, click the Picker button and select a color this way - type a name for it in the text area.
Step 4.
Click the curve icon to the left of each of the color in turn to adjust how the color is applied to the image. The highlights are on the right of the chart and the shadows on the left. Drag upwards on the curve to apply more color in that area of the image, or drag down to apply less color. This feature lets you add more of your second ink color, for example, to the highlights. If you want a real time view of your changes - tick Preview. Click OK when you're happy with the colors.
When you are done, you need 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, and after you can clicking the Save button and type a name for it.