In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a duotone effect in Photoshop.
I'll start by showing you how to use the duotone mode and how to apply the different presets
found in that mode.
Usually, this mode is used when printing with large commercial printing presses, so we won't
spend too much time here.
We'll spend most of the time using the Gradient Map Adjustment Layer and I will show you different
techniques that you can use to create some really interesting effects.
Okay, let's get started with the tutorial.
Now, I'm just going to show you a quick way of creating a duotone image and it's by going
to Image, Mode, and selecting Gray Scale.
Photoshop is going to ask you if you want to discard the color information.
You can go to Image, Mode again, and this time, select Duotone.
This is going to be grayed out if you don't have a grayscale image.
Then, with duotone, you're going to get this duotone options, and you have these different
presets that apply different duotones.
And if you double-click on one of these colors, it brings up the Color Library Window.
And notice that we're using Pantone Solid Coated and that's because this feature was
designed for printing presses, so you're going to be selecting one of these Pantone colors
here and making adjustments to your duotone image.
When you're done you can just press OK.
Notice that in the Channels panel, we don't have any of the three RGB channels.
Instead, we have one single duotone channel.
So, if you like this effect, then you want to take it back into the RGB, you can, just
going back into the RGB mode.
But, you usually want to stay in the duotone mode if you're going to be printing on those
large commercial printing presses.
But this is not what the tutorial is going to be about.
Instead, I'm going to show you how to create this effect using adjustment layers, so I'm
just going to go into File, Revert, and that's going to revert my image back into its original
state, and I can show you another way of creating duotone images and that's by going into the
Adjustment Layers and creating a gradient map.
The Gradient Map allows us to map color onto an image based on its luminance values.
Currently, the gradient goes from Black to White; that means that the darkest points
are going to be black and the lightest points are going to be white.
But if we change that to, say this gradient here, you'll see that anything that is black
will be red, and anything that is white will be green.
And that's how we're going to create our duotone by adjusting this gradient editor.
We also have the Photographic Tonings here under the Gear icon.
So Photographic Toning, you can just press OK and you can see the different photographic
toning gradients that you're going to apply to your image, and there's a whole bunch of
them here as well.
A really cool one is here under the Special Effects.
This is not necessarily what we're going for in this tutorial, but Photoshop does this
really cool chrome-looking effect.
So, if you want to create a chrome-looking effect, this is what you would use.
But, anyway, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to click on Reset Gradients, press OK,
and I'm going to click on this one right here, the one that goes from purple to orange, and
that's what we're going to work with, and I'm going to press OK.
Now, before we continue with the tutorial, I would just want to point out that you can
use different blend modes and create different effects, so we can use Luminosity to keep
the original colors, but use the luminance values of the colors we have selected here
or we can select Color, and use the color with the original luminance values.
Then, we can also do Soft Light or Overlay and, of course, make any adjustments to the
opacity if we need to.
But, anyway, I just wanted to give you those options so you can create different effects.
So I'm going to bring the Opacity back up to 100 and I'm going to change the Blend Mode
back to Normal, and I'm going to show you, you can make some adjustments if you need
to.
So I'm going to disable this layer and remember, the way that Gradient Map works is by looking
at the luminance values and applying the colors that are on this gradient, so anything that
is black will be purple, anything that is white will be orange, and the tones between
the lights and darks will be a transition between the orange and purple.
And we can make adjustments to this effect by adjusting the luminance values of the original
image.
And we can adjust the luminance values by creating a new Black and White Adjustment
Layer right above the background layer, which turns everything black and white, and we can
use the sliders to make tonal adjustments to the image below that base on the color,
so we can make the reds darker, make the yellows brighter, but you really won't see any change
until I enable the Gradient Map, then you'll see how, by controlling the Luminance Values,
the Gradient Map changes because the gradient map is applied based on the luminance values
of the layers below.
And now that I'm done making the proper adjustments, I'm going to show you one other thing that
you can do.
Select the background, and then, select the Quick Selection Tool, and we're going to make
a selection around her, so I'm going to click and drag, and you don't have to be too precise
tutorial, a selection like this will be good enough.
So we have the selection going around heróour foregroundóso I'm going to click on the New
Layer Mask icon to create a layer mask and I'm also going to click on Select and Mask.
If you're using an older version of Photoshop, click on Refine Edge and simply smooth out
the selection just a little bit, so it's not so jaggy, and then, press OK.
And now, enable all layers again and create a new solid color.
The solid color is going to be white and I'm going to place that below the girl layer.
So now we have more of a graphic design effect.
So now we can apply text and other things to the side of the image there, so this could
be, maybe, like a web banner or something like that.
One other thing that you can do is you can take the layer with the girl and you can press
Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, so now you have a duplicate of that.
Click on the layer below and click on the layer mask, and then, click on Invert, so
that's going to make the background visible again.
But on this layer, you can bring down the Opacity to sort of separate the background