Two-color photos emphasize texture and composition.
Photographers who enjoy printing black and white photos on home printers are sometimes disappointed with the print results. Reducing photographs to two-color work often gives more satisfying results. Gradients of color in digital photos is achieved through a mixture of three colors, RGB mode, or four colors, CMYK mode. RGB stands for red, green and blue. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. RGB is traditionally used to display photographs electronically in .jpg format, while CMYK is used for .tif format for print media. Either mode can be reduced to two colors in an image-processing software program such as PhotoShop or Lightbox.
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Reduce a photograph to two colors with the duotone function of your photo-processing software. Save a copy of your original image and select grayscale mode from the image menu. Discard the color layers and select duotone. White selects as the default color. Select the second color by clicking on the color square. In the pop-up color library, choose the desired color. Preview the color as the photograph changes according to your choices. Click on the curves graph and make adjustments to your two-color photograph as desired.
Inkjet printers do not print the gradients of black in a grayscale, black and white, photo with the monochromatic look of the on-screen photograph when using standard ink cartridges. One way to achieve two-color prints is to replace color cartridges with a monochromatic ink set. Smooth tonalities can be achieved with monochromatic ink, which print in shades of gray with black.
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In the early days of motion pictures, the film industry used a color-processing method called technicolor to colorize black-and-white movies. This two-color cine-style has gained popularity with digital photographers, and can be created in a photo-processing program. Save a copy of a photo -- and from the layers palette, add an adjustment layer. Select "channel mixer." In the output channel box choose "blue." The value of blue is set to 0 percent, and the value of green is set to 100 percent.
Blend the colors of your two-color technicolor image by adding an adjustment layer and converting the layer to a smart object under the layers menu. On the layers toolbar, select "color" under the drop-down menu to apply filters to the image colors only. From the filters menu, select gaussian blur. Your image previews live as you change the value of the blur. Save the image when satisfied with the results.
