CHAT Monthly competition December - Duotone
 

The technique for this month's competition is 'Duotone'[/B]

I have tried to give everyone a chance to try something a bit different, maybe not to everyones taste but lets see what happens.

A duotone is a type of image which is printed in two colors. Duotones have been in existence since the early days of photography: most people on here are familiar with sepia toned prints, for example, which use various shades of brown.
A duotone is also called a monochrome print, because the image appears to be comprised of variants on a single color.

Many graphic designers choose to use a duotone to make an artistic statement. It has a classic and timeless look which can be quite appealing for specific marketing and brand campaigns. Duotones often appear in advertisements which want to suggest stability, longevity, and style. While sepia is a common choice, a duotone can be made with any color. A duotone can be subdued or radiant, depending on what color is used, making it suitable for a wide range of graphics applications.

The look of a duotone is favored over plain black and white photography in some cases because the duotone has a more saturated, compelling appearance. Duotones often seem more textured to the eye, and they also capture more photographic detail.

[B]OH! NO BLACK AND WHITES PLEASE[/B] anything else is acceptable.

Tecnique can be found here [url]http://www.digital-photography-school.com/convert-duotones-photoshop[/url]

Entries can be found [URL="http://www.photoradar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=69014#post69014"][B]here[/B][/URL]

Have Fun:)
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Rules are below:

Rules for the monthly competition are:- (please read carefully).

1. All members of the forum are encouraged to take part in the competition, and eventually select by voting, a winner. Voting however is not restricted to participants in the competition which is open to all members of the Photo Radar forum.

2) To be valid images must be taken and entered after the theme has been posted, up to midnight UK time of the 21st of the month. ALL of the elements of any composite images or montages must also be taken within this time frame.

3. Unless stated otherwise there will be no restrictions set on the amount of post processing/editing of images. However, where the setter of the theme/topic determines that the restrictions on post processing/editing would be desirable then any such restrictions should be clearly stated when the theme/topic is first set.

Equally, there are no restrictions on equipment that can be used bar the fact that a camera of some description must be used for the image capture e.g. not a scanner

4. Images should be posted in the relevant "Entries" thread by no later than midnight UK time on the 21st of the month. Images posted later than this time will not be considered eligible and consequently will not appear in the "Poll" (voting) thread. You are allowed only one entry per competition.

5. The "Poll" will run for 2 days from the time of posting (approximately 12:00 UK time on the 22nd of the month) so that it generally ends midday on the 24th.

6. The winner accepts responsibility for posting a new topic by starting a fresh "Chat & Entries" thread by midnight on the last day of the month. The theme must be a photographic technique. The winner also accepts responsibility for setting up the said "Entries" thread and in setting up and managing the "Poll" thread.

7. Participants in the competition are not allowed to vote for their own image. The Poll will be set as 'open' thereby showing who has both voted for and appreciated your work.

When setting a new technique, please choose carefully so as not to exclude members by virtue of their location or religion amongst other things.

8. Whilst not compulsory, participants in the competition are encouraged/requested to add some comments regarding their submission in the appropriate "Chat" thread. Explanations regarding the reasoning behind the capture and drawing attention to any particular aspects of it, including any post editing work, will not only possibly help to explain your image when members come to consider the image for voting upon, but also may be of benefit to the community as concerns particular aspects of composition, lighting and editing work with which they may not be familiar with.

9. Critique: It should be accepted that by submitting an image to the competition, in fact in any open forum or competition, this leaves open the possibility of critique being offered, whether specifically requested or otherwise. In fact, in the absence of open and honest critique we effectively close the door upon the learning process or the accumulation of knowledge in which to further and better our interest in Photography. That said, any critique should NOT be posted in the "Chat" thread until the end of the voting time window thereby negating the possibility of any influence being placed upon the voting process. Furthermore, for critique to have any real meaning, it should be written in a constructive manner to highlight both positive as well as negative points (if necessary) with the critique being so constructed so as to not cause any personal offence. In short then, an advisory/recommendatory terminology should be used leaving the recipient of the critique in no doubt that the view expressed is only a personal one to which others may differ. Please consider that the written word can often be interpreted in a different way to the spoken word.

Additional notes regarding critque:-

Participants in the monthly competition are encouraged to provide a critique of the image above and below theirs in the entries thread. It's not compulsory but it has a few clear benefits for the reviewer and reviewee:

1 - it encourages you to think critically about the images. What do you like? What could be improved?
2 - It encourages reviews for images that may not have gotten many votes, thus supporting beginners
3 - It provides a spread of reviews without any one person having to take loads of time to prepare a set of reviews
4 - When it works, everyone gets at least two reviews

Sounds quite interesting and may come in handy and just in time for my 1st college project post processing

Interesting idea Jeff, one slight issue though does elements have an option to convert to duotone?

I know photoshop does but not sure how many of the regulars have access to that!

[B]Dave, point taken, looks like I may have to change the subject as there is no direct conversion using ELements.[/B]

[QUOTE=kerbside;69123][B]Dave, point taken, looks like I may have to change the subject as there is no direct conversion using ELements.[/B][/QUOTE]

I may have misunderstood what exactly a duotone photo is, but ... I thought sepia was mentioned as an example. And a sepia lookalike is easy to febricate by desaturating a photograph and then bringing back some colour, espscially red I think. (It's a long time ago I did this.)

You can also turn a colour photo to black and white in Elements, at least in mine, which is Elements 8.

This picture I just rustled up by turning it into a black and white one and then colorize it in the 'hue and saturation' bit of Elements. Colorise is in the bottom right corner and you can colourpick a desired colour first and then colorise the photo.

[URL="http://www.photoradar.com/files/imagecache/original_large/photos/users/reinardina/dsc07785-ae-al-duotone.jpg"][IMG]http://www.photoradar.com/files/imagecache/original_large/photos/users/reinardina/dsc07785-ae-al-duotone.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Hope I make a bit of sense. I think it is do-able even with a simple editing programme.

It may be even a better learning curve if you have to experiment and find your own way, rather than using a preset duotone programme.

This story only 'holds' if the above photo can be classified as a duotone!.

Hope this helps! (I'm going off line now, be back tomorrow if I need to explain things a bit more specific.

Elements 10, not sure if this is the right way but if you open your photo, choose enhance, adjust colour, remove colour, then choose colour variations, then it gives you some colour variations and the choice to adjust shadows, mid tones etc. Not sure at allif this is the process but it looks to be what Jeff described.

Here is another link showing you how to carry out this process using a gradient map.
I have been looking into this all night and although it is not classified as a tru duotone i think for this topic most people should be able to acheive an end result no matter what Pp programme they have.
Sepia is not the only colour that you can use by the way.
[B]LINK[/B]
[url]http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=GB#/watch?v=EtmzZQNgJkQ[/url]

Just trying to follow the theme that Chris started the monthly competition with which was a "photographic technique"

I have just had a quick go of this.. i will post the original and the duotone versions.

This was taken a whil ago and is not in the time frame and will be just for practice.

Is this what you're after?

Original..
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/16462409@N05/6414711487/][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7148/6414711487_55bf6883e6_z.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/16462409@N05/6414711487/]kids on bikes[/url] by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/16462409@N05/]Evertonian1878[/url], on Flickr

Duotone..
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/16462409@N05/6414713657/][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7173/6414713657_a33184fc79_z.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/16462409@N05/6414713657/]kids-on-bikes-duotone[/url] by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/16462409@N05/]Evertonian1878[/url], on Flickr

All the examples that have been shown are what I was looking for, no matter how you have obtained the end result.

Game on then, excellent. I'm thinking that for best results, we are loking for a photo that will have plenty highlights, shadows and midtones and lots of detail.