Lovely shot and nice duotones, Patti. For toned shots I have been using some of Russell Brown’s techniques. This involves:
1st. A hue/saturation layer in COLOR mode. This is used later to adjust the colors as they are rendered in B&W (a bit like applying a filter).
2nd. A hue/saturation layer in normal mode, with saturation at -100. This turns the image to B&W.
3rd. A hue/saturation layer in normal mode, with ‘colorize’ checked. By changing the hue and opacity, you can change the tint.
I’m reasonably happy with the results, although better control of the ‘filter’ part, and the toning would be welcome. I may give your techniques a try, or combine them with the ‘filter’ layer.
Hi Patti π first I must congradulate you on the photograph. It is quite superb. Your duotones are just icing on the cake and that is all they should be. Although I am quite fond of the Palladium hues, π
"Andrew Rodney" wrote
Another way to produce nice B&W effects (and more) is with the new
PhotoKit for Elements.
Andrew,
I’ve downloaded the demo of your PhotoKit-EL, and have browsed through a bit of your web site.
I did not immediately see any reference as to whether PhotoKit-EL will conflict with Richard Lynch’s Hidden Power tools. Can you advise, before I install your product?
Thanks,
Byron
I’m not familiar with this product (Hidden Power tools) but I can’t see why there would be any conflict. PhotoKit should work well with others <G>. The product has been around quite a while as a Photoshop plug-in with no such issues so unless this other product is doing something it shouldn’t within Elements, all should be fine.
"Andrew Rodney" wrote
I’m not familiar with this product (Hidden Power tools) but I can’t see
why there would be any conflict.
Andrew,
Thanks for the reply. Richard Lynch’s book "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2", and the accompanying Hidden Power Tools for Elements are well-known within the community of Elements users that frequent this forum. (www.hiddenelements.com)
The reason I thought to ask whether your product would conflict with Richard’s is that his tools customize the "How To" palette, and I see that yours seems to modify it, as well.
I’m afraid I’ll have to put off installing PhotoKit-EL until I am certain that it will not disrupt my installation of Hidden Power Tools. I would appreciate you posting an update, if you ever determine compatibility, or otherwise.
Regards,
Byron
The page above says:
The tools provided on the CD with the book The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2, expand the functionality of Elements like a plug-inΒbut they aren’t plug-ins
So there should be no problems since PhotoKit is a plug-in. We supply recipes for making the work easier for you and again, this should not have any effect on the existing recipes installed.
Andrew,
The trial of PhotoKit-EL installed without trouble, as you anticipated.
Thanks,
Byron
Thanks John and Jodi. The original pink rose pic along with the b/w is in the current photo challenge. After I did the b/w, I started thinking it would be nice to try some of the classic tints/duotones on my b/w rose…which led me to search out examples to go by and take samples from. That’s why I was looking for that piezography web site in an earlier thread.
I decided to try gradient maps because it very easy to change the colors and adjust to suit the photo. It’s also nice to have them on hand to use again.
I would gladly share these gradients if anyone is interested. There are 12 gradients and the file is 10 KB.
Patti
Forgot to give you my email if you want the duotone gradients. Click on my name and use the email you see there minus the (no spam). I gotta go right now, but I will post very brief instructions later tonight.
Patti
I’ve tried both Richard Lynch’s "true" duotones work around (effectively you make two different plates and run the paper through a printer twice) and gradient maps. For web work and most printing gradient maps are quicker and easier and really there is no need to do much else. But even with my printer (which is low end to put it mildly) you do get a richer effect and better contrast doing the "true" duotones for large scale prints. Getting the colour to print out exactly as it appears on the screen is tricky whatever method you use as even a slight colour shift, which would hardly notice on a normal photo, sticks up like a sore thumb on a monochrome/duotone/tritone image.
Susan S
Edit: those are lovely images. I particularly like the platinum.
For those who would like a copy of my Classic Duotone gradients maps click on my name above and then click the "my email" link. I changed it just a little while ago to a link to make it easier…I hope.
Brief instructions:
Place the .grd file (Patti’s Classic Duotones) in the Photoshop Elements 2\Presets\Gradients folder. If Elements is open at the time you will have to restart to see them on the Gradients list.
To use them for duotones:
1. Open a black and white image. If it is in grayscale mode you will need to change it to RGB.
2. On the Layers palette, add a Gradient Map adjustment layer.
3. Change the blend mode to Multiply.
4. Double-click on the Gradient Map thumbnail and in the Gradient Map dialog click on the large color space underneath where it says Gradient Used for Grayscale Mapping and this will open the editor. This will make youe image look darker, but don’t worry about that now.
5. In the Gradient Editor click on More and select Patti’s Classic Duotones. Select the duotone gradient of your choice. Click OK on the Gradient Editor and OK on the Gradient Map dialog.
You can easily change the gradient by entering the editor the same way as above. Watch the colors change as you select the different colors. If you are familiar with editing gradients, you can adjust the color and white stops or midpoint for different effects.
You can try other blending modes, but these gradients were created in "real time" using Multiply. If you come up with another cool way to use these gradients, please share it, OK?
Have fun!
Patti
To back up Mr. Rodney, his plugins shouldn’t have ANY effect on my tools. Plugins are very different animals than what I did with the How-to palette.
As far as duotones go, there is a richness duotones achieve in print by using more than one ink–in separate passes. If you are looking just for the coloring effect in the digital image (say for a website) it almost doesn’t matter how you achieve it. But if you are looking for the real printed effect, you won’t get the richness of tone from anything less than multiple passes in your printer–which causes dots to overlay, and makes for a more realistic and rich printed effect.
Again, Susan is right on it…
What are the possibilities that the printer won’t align the two images? I would think that might be a problem, particularly for the top fed prints.
Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
Dick
Dick – I was amazed that my extraordinarily low end Epson printer lined up the pages perfectly. I was expecting there to be some problem. but there wasn’t. Getting the colors spot on was much harder!
Susan,
Thanks for your response. I’m going to give it a try. Worked on a picture of one of my granddaughters this afternoon and really like what came out of it.
So there might be hope for my low-end Lexmark yet!
Dick
I’ve gotten some really great prints of my gradient map duotones from my Epson Stylus C82 (on Epson Heavyweight Matte paper). I did a test of all 12 colors of the roses you see on my pbase page. I have finally gotten my monitor and my printer to talk to one another, so to speak.
I also did tests prints of the duotone I did from Richard’s book. I used a Pantone color for the spot color (got the #’s from Corel Photopaint) I tried one without separation and it came out just fine. Then I tried the experiment of printing the colors separately. No problem with it lining up in the printer. However, the black was much too pronounced and I didn’t like the results at all. I’m wondering if I did something wrong.
I also did a true duotone in Corel Photopaint and it was the best one yet. The tones and colors look identical to the Hidden Elements one, but the smoothness of the shading was much, much nicer. Not sure why though!
Patti
