Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you what I think is the best way to create a custom duotone from a photo.
Open a photo that you'd like to use for this project.
It can be color or black and white.
I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
The first step is to separate your subject from its background by making a selection around your subject.
There are many ways to this, however for this example, I'll use the Quick Selection Tool.
If you're using this tool as well, I find that in most cases, a radius of 7 to 10 pixels works fine.
Drag the tool over the inside of your subject.
To remove areas outside your subject, press and hold Alt or Option as you drag over those areas.
If you're using version CC 2015.5 or later, to refine the selection, click the "Select
and Mask" button or go to Select and "Select and Mask".
On earlier versions, go to Select and Refine Edge".
If you'd rather use "Refine Edge" instead of "Select and Mask", Shift-click it to open Refine Edge.
I won't be going over either of them here, since I did in-depth tutorials on both of them.
I provided those links to in my video's description below.
Output it to "New Layer with Layer Mask".
To automatically adjust your subject's lights and darks, invoke "Auto Tone" by pressing
Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + Auto Tone darkens the darkest pixels to pure black and lightens
the lightest pixels to pure white.
I like it better than Auto Contrast because with Auto Tone Tone, the Red, Green and Blue
channels each receive their own separate boosts in contrast.
We'll convert our image into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right of the Layers panel and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Next, we'll make our subject into a duotone, which essentially replaces your subject's
darker tones into one color and its lighter tones into another color.
There are many techniques that can do this, however, I'll show you the one that I find
to be the quickest, easiest and most flexible.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click, "Gradient Map".
Click the gradient bar to open the Gradient Editor.
Click the "Black, White thumbnail and click the lower, left Stop.
Click the color box to open the Color Picker.
The color you pick will be for the darkest tones of your subject.
Feel free to pick whatever color you like.
Remember, since you're applying it to a Smart Object, you can change the color at any time.
Since I already know the color I want, I'll type it into the hexadecimal field.
Once you pick the color, click OK or press Enter or Return.
Click the lower, right Stop, the color box and pick a color for your subject's lightest tones.
Next, we'll adjust our colors' brightness and contrast by clicking the Adjustment layer
icon again and this time, click "Brightness/Contrast".
I'll drag the Contrast slider to the right until I like the contrast of my colors.
Since every color combination has its own degree of contrast, feel free to adjust the
amount to your liking.
Again, you can re-adjust it at any time.
Next, we'll create the background.
Click the bottom layer and the New layer icon to make a new layer.
We'll fill the empty layer with black, but first, if your foreground and background colors
aren't black and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
Since black is your foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
Notice that even though we filled the layer with black, our background is the same color
as the darkest tones of our subject.
The reason it is, is because adjustment layers affect all the layers beneath them in the Layers panel.
Since our background is below the adjustment layers, it's being affected, as well.
If we want to restrict the adjustment layers to affect just our cutout subject and not
include the background, we need to clip them to our subject.
To do this, click either one of the adjustment layers and Shift-click the other one to make them both active.
Make them into clipping masks by pressing Ctrl + Alt + G on Windows or Cmd + Option
+ G on a Mac or you can go to Layer and "Create Clipping Mask".
Notice, our background is now black, since the adjustment layers are clipped to our subject.
Double-click the black background layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Color Overlay", the color box and pick a color for you background.
For my background, I'll click the darkest color of my subject to pick up its color, and click OK.
Next, we'll add a graphic shape behind our subject.
Click the new Layer icon to make a new layer.
Open your "Polygon Tool " and pick "Shape".
If you're using CS 5 or earlier, the Shape Tool icon is here.
If your Fill color isn't black, click the Fill box and pick black.
Since there's no stroke, this icon should be active.Type in the amount of sides you'd like your shape to have.
I'll make mine have 80 sides.
Click the gear icon.
Check "Star" and type in the amount you want the sides to indent by.
I typed in 25%.
Place your cursor somewhere along the vertical middle of your document and drag the shape out.
We can reposition it later if you want.
To hide the paths, press Ctrl or Cmd + H.
Double-click an empty area of the shape layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Color Overlay" and the color box.
Pick a color for the shape.
I already picked a color for mine.
If you want to reposition it, press "v" to open your Move Tool and drag it to a new position.
Next, we'll add a second graphic shape to the background.
To center it over the first shape, go to View.
If "Rulers" and "Snap" aren't checked, click on them to make them active.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + T to open your Transform Tool.
In the middle of the Transform's bounding box is a small icon called the "Reference Point".
This is the center of the first shape and we want it to be the center of our next shape, as well.
To do this, go to the ruler on the left and drag out a guideline to the reference point.
It'll snap to it since we have "Snap" checked.
To see the guideline, press Ctrl or Cmd + H. Go to the top ruler and drag down a guideline
to the reference point, as well.
Press Enter or Return to close the Transform Tool.
Create a new layer to place our second shape into.
Open your Polygon Tool again and change the number of sides to whatever you'd like for
your second shape.
I'll make mine have 90 sides.
Click the gear icon and type in a percentage you'd like to its sides to indent.
I'll type in 80%.
Go to the center of the guidelines and drag out the shape.
Press Enter or Return to accept it and hide the guidelines.
Double-click an empty area of the second shape's layer and click "Color Overlay".
Click the color box and pick a color for this shape.
Next, we'll add text.
Make the top layer active and make a new layer above it.
Since I want my text to be white, I'll press "x" to invert my foreground and background colors.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and pick a font.
I'm using "Glaser Becker Stencil Regular".
If you'd like to use it as well, its link is in my video's description or project files.
I'll make its size: 65 points, the aliasing: Sharp and "Center alignment".
Click on your document and type out your text.
To adjust the spacing between all of your characters, highlight the line of text
and click the "Character/Paragraph" icon or go to Window and "Character".
Drag the "Tracking" icon to the left or right.
To movie it, open your Move Tool and drag it.
To center it, press Ctrl or Cmd + A to select your document and click the "Align Horizontal Centers" icon.
Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. Add as many lines of text as you like.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!