Old image being processed for first time. This was taken with an a6000 with an adapted lens, most likely an M42 mount Pentax 35mm. Flowers are a bit soft. For those who are interested, I do an initial processing in Capture One and then convert the image to a tritone recipe in Photoshop. This image matches my old darkroom work with warm tone fiber based papers. - Best - Kk
The delicacy of flowers can be very well presented in a soft" fashion Kevin. That you did here. The toning is wonderful! Sort of goes with the fence being rusty and discolored!
Dan
photonoclast wrote:
superb toning. If you'd like to share anything about your recipe, it would be very interesting. If it's a deep family secret, that's fine too!
Hi photonoclast,
I'm happy to share. First, how familiar are you with working with duotones/tritones? It will help me know what needs to be shared.
Apologies for the delay in responding, but I needed to get everything together for this to make sense. I'm not sure if PS Elements is capable of duotones, so everything that follows is intended for Photoshop.
First, duotones, tritones, and quad tones are not really intended for photo editing, but were intended for ink separations when doing offset printing. Because of this, there are two actions that you have to do when creating a duotone recipe, the first is ink selection and the second is the ink overlay profile (curve). If you are just experimenting with duotones, I would begin with a present recipe before diving in and trying to create a new duotone. (I'll share one below). The recipes I currently use have taken several years to develop. I became interested in using tritones to finish B&W images because I was unhappy with the tonality of B&W images that came straight out of PS and Capture One. What I wanted was to emulate the tonal qualities of darkroom prints that I used to produce. It is an added step to generating finished images, but I am not a volume producer and the added step doesn't bother me. YMMV.
So below is a simplified approach to applying a tritone recipe to a B&W image.
Step 1, in your editing software of choice process your image and then save as either an RGB TIFF or a PSD. I usually save straight to PSD. This is the file format that will be adopted for the duotone file. In Photoshop open the file and then convert to grayscale.
Step 3, the Duotone dialogue box will open. Here you will see the ink recipe as well as the application curve for each ink. You can click on any of these to adjust (don't until you understand this better) At the top you will see a pull down menu and a gear. The gear allows you to load, save, and delete recipes. (.ADO file)
The pull down menu will allow you to apply the recipe I'm providing in the link below. It is titled K Weston P V2. This stands for Kemner (Me) Weston (Edward Weston) P (Platinum) Version 2. This is a recipe based on sampled Weston platinum prints.
Step 4, once you have applied a recipe, it will still need final adjustments using curves. I short cut using Command M in Mac to open the following dialogue box and adjust the image as needed.
The link below should allow you to download an ADO file as a starting point. You will need to load this using the gear icon in the Duotones dialogue box. Copy the ENTIRE line and paste in your browser's address line. It doesn't work as a link for some reason.
Very well seen, nicely composed and processed. Seems like a lot of work to get the right look, but well worth it. I'm kind of lazy with post processing so I'd probably have just toned the image in Silver Efex II.
Brent
I love the rich rendering and tones - and thank you for sharing the formula! I've dabbled with duotones and tritones but never quite found the sweet-spot. I'll give this a try. Thanks again,
Many many thanks for sharing! I'm sure many folks will find this useful. I've only used the gradient map in PS, so this is a very different approach I did not know about & looks very powerful. (I do most of my processing in Capture One, but for some reason I find their split-toning tool very disappointing & have to go into PS.)
Thanks again!
Thanks again,