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In previous exercises, we saw how you can create grayscale images. We've also seen how
you can create Multichannel images. We're going to bring these two worlds
together as we take a look at duotones, tritones and quadtones inside of Photoshop.
I'm working inside an image called Custom B&W mix.jpg, found inside the 01 Hello Channels
folder and I created a custom black and white variation
of this image using Photoshop CS3 's black and white command. Now we're
going to be discussing that command in detail in a later chapter.
I'm pretty happy with the way the image looks, we've got the sort of
bright eye is going on here, some bright details inside the forhead, in the side of the guys
face, a darkish face against a very dark background
so a lot of contrast going on, but there's a couple of problems with this
image. One is it's totally flat grayscale, no color going on whatsoever, no warm and
then the second problem is that it's not going to print very well, if we're
using a single ink, or if we print to a black and white printer and the reason
is, we're seeing 256 different brightness levels on screen, but when we go to output
this image we're going to render maybe a hundred of
those luminous levels, cause a printer just can't convey that many luminous levels using
a single ink once again. So we're going to take care of both these problems. We're going
to infuse the image with a little bit of warmth and we're going to give it a
better chance of printing in rich textural detail, by converting it to a duotone.
So first thing is first. You've got to start with a grayscale image, so you've got to start
with a single channel image like this one right here, I'll go and switch to
the Channels palette so that we can see, we've got one channel of gray,
then you go up to the Image menu, you choose Mode and you choose this guy right here Duotone.
Now Photoshop starts off by suggesting you create a monotone
using a single ink, and that's actually no better than what we had before, in fact, it's
warst because of the way the colors are mapping, they're a little
weaker on screen here. We want to switch to either a Duotone, that
uses two inks, a Tritone which uses three inks or a Quadtone which
uses four inks and I'm going to suggest for now that we go with a Quadtone,
so that we take advantage of as many inks as possible here.
Now, you can go ahead and click on one of these color swatches to add an ink. Notice
that the ink wells are essentially empty at this point, so you can click on one
of the swatches, you're going to be brought into the Color
Libraries style dialog box by default. You can also select a color from the
picker if you want by clicking on the picker button
and then you'll see the familiar color picker here. Well, we want to work with color library,
so I'm going to click on the Color Libraries button to switch back here
and then you can scroll through this list and find the color that you want to add, like
let's go with some bright magenta for the moment.
Then click OK in order to accept that. The you'd have to do that for each of the other
inks as well. It's easier to start with one of Photoshop's presets.
That's what we're going to do. It's going to look a lot better than this two and to
do that click on the Load button. Now here's the problem, the presets are located
in the wrong location, or perhaps Photoshop is taking us to the wrong location by default.
Either way, we're at the wrong place and we need to dig into a different location. So
here's what I want you to do. On the PC, you Macintosh people
sit tight for a second, on a PC, I'm going to go ahead and click this down pointing arrow
head, you can see, this is the path under Windows Vista to get to this wrong Duotones
folder. Instead I'm going to go to the local disk,
the C drive, right here and this assumes that you installed Photoshop on the
C drive, if you installed it on a different drive, then go to that different drive.
I'm going to go top my C drive. Then you want to go into Program Files, then
you want to go into Adobe, then you want to go into Adobe Photoshop CS3,
by the way, if I'm moving too fast for you, don't worry, I'm going to show you
the entire path in just a moment, then go into presets,
and then you want to go into Duotones, and then you want to go into Quadtones in
our case, and then I want you to go into Pantone Quadtones,
so that we can load some spot color Quadtones and then I want you to
grab this guy right here Bl 431 492 556, which means black, plus Pantone colors for 431 492
and 556, Of course, now here's the entire path, so you can see it,
here's the wrong path, that Photoshop takes you to by default, which is
nice and empty, isn't that confusing? And then here's the correct path
if you actually want to get some files, which it seems to me you would. All right, so anyway.
Here we go. I'll go ahead and grab that guy. Now you Macintosh people, wait just one second,
I'm just going to show you how to get to your correct folders as well. Then click load,
in order to load those Pantone colors right there. They don't
look very good by default, we're going to fix them in the very next exercise,
but for now just go ahead and click OK in order to accept your duotone.
All right, you Macintosh people who have been waiting so patiently, here's where you go.
You want to go into your computer, my computer happens to be called assassin
and my hard drive is called Litvinenko's Assassin, basically the idea is my computer assassinated
Alexander Litvinenko, so mystery solve there. Your computer is going to have a more sensible
name I would imagine, and your hard drive might just be called hard drive or
something along those lines. Once you get to the proper hard drive,
then you go to Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/ Presets/Duotones/Quadtones and Pantone
Quadtones, and I'll go over to the Layers palette here.
If I turn off the arrow in menu layers in this image, so I did not provide this image
for you, I'm just using it for demonstrational purposes,
then you'll see this file called Bl 43 1492 556, go ahead and load it on up.
Click that Load button in order to load it and you'll get the same effect we're seeing
here on the PC, which is this image here, which comprises four different inks. All right,
it looks pretty good, but I'd say actually looks way too dark and is also
to green, I don't like that sort of chocky green look. We're going to solve all these
problems and create a perfect Quadtone in the very next exercise.