A duotone photo is a photo that uses only two colours. One being black and the other a Pantone colour. Why would you want to convert a photo to only two colours? Well, it can cut down your printing costs. Small businesses with small budgets sometimes produce their marketing materials in only two colours. I’m sure you’ve seen some pamphlets or brochures that only used blue and black, red and black, etc.
In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create a two-colour photo with Photoshop.

Creating a duotone image in Photoshop

Choose a photo. It can be a colour or black and white photo. If it’s in colour, let’s convert it to grayscale first.

Open your photo with Photoshop. Go to Image > Mode > Graysale.

Click on Discard when the window pops up. Now we have a grayscale photo.

Convert to duotone

Next, go to Image > Mode > Duotone. The Duotone box will pop up and show two colours – black and a Pantone colour. To choose another Pantone colour, click on the colour box next to Ink 2. The Color Libraries box will open showing all the Pantone colours.

Scroll down and choose one. Click OK. Your image will now be updated with the new colour. I’ve chosen this purple Pantone colour.

If you think your image looks a bit dark or too light, click the curve button next to Ink 2. Drag the curve up to add colour, and down to subtract the colour.

When you’re happy, click OK.

You can also choose another colour other than black. Experiment with different colours. You can even create a vintage image using black and yellow inks, like this one using Pantone 127 C:

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