18 Effective Duotone Portraits

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By definition, Wikipedia describes duotone as:

a halftone reproduction of an image using the superimposition of one contrasting color halftone (traditionally black) over another color halftone. This is most often used to bring out middle tones and highlights of an image. The most common colors used are blue, yellow, browns and reds.

Duotone prints used to take a lot of time and skill to produce, and for many years they were not in among photographers or admirers of photography.  The last few years of digital photography combined with advancements in post production have given photographers the ability to create, simulate and replicate many traditional film processes, and duotone images are once again gaining popularity.  They are, as said above, most commonly seen in browns and blues, but reds and yellows do make an appearance.  This collection of duotone portraits shows how some creative post processing can really amplify and change the overall mood of a subject.

He is a Singaporean

Photo By williamcho

Matthias

Photo By Thomas van Beek

Thai vagabond - the Thai fisherman treatment!

Photo By dæxus

Photo By jo vh

Photo By Alan Cabello

Attitude!

Photo By TheZionView

Photo By Onur YILDIRIM (Shadov)

Thai fisherman - a dramatic revisit

Photo By dæxus

massimo volume_04

Photo By [carlo cravero]

Photo By Fikayo Aderoju

Portrait Series - 002

Photo By shutupyourface

settlefish_02

Photo By [carlo cravero]

Photo By Elīza Lenša

Duotone Facial 3

Photo By stephenvance

smokin

Photo By troycochrane

Tony

Photo By pdcawley

Selfportrait

Photo By zetson

Photo By Miggy Rivera

About Author

is a professional photographer. See his site at Mike Panic Photography.

There was a book published in the early 90s for ‘real world’ Photoshop techniques (which I used in my graphic design studio for prepress). Most of my duotones where actually quads though sometimes to save costs in 2-color printing, I did stick to using only 2 colors. I never ever use a preset duotone in camera or out. I still will shoot raw and then do the magic in Photoshop and get tones that are really pleasing, either warm or cool.

The examples here are rich—just as they should be. Superb!

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