Duotone

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A duotone image, made using black and blue inks in Photoshop.

Duotone is a form of printing halftones with two colors of ink, one usually black.

Thanks in part to Photoshop, duotone is also a generic term for images using a color-separation printing scheme. Normally CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (blacK)) separations, whereas a duotone would be two separations, and can be of any ink color (in offset printing).

1 History
2 Digital / Modern Use
3 See Also
4 External links

[edit] History

Duotones hail from Cyanotype and halftone prints. Color images in newspapers and comic books are usually halftone prints and occasionally duotones.

[edit] Digital / Modern Use

Duotone color mode in Photoshop supports between one and four colors of ink. Because home inkjet printers are far better at printing full-color images than black-and-white, many photographers use Photoshop Duotone processing to improve their greyscale prints.

Photoshop's Duotone mode is also commonly used for creating sepia toned prints, using black and yellow inks, sometimes with a third color.