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Tritone
By Matt Brandon
A few people have commented on a technique that I have used in my B&W conversion of Raw images. I have two confessions
to make here. First, is it is not B&W. It is Tritone, a type of grayscale conversion found in PhotoShop. The second
confession is I am still new to it. So, If you read this and have a better method, I am open to hear about it. I will
say that what I am doing here seems to be working.
I learned this technique from a photographer friend I met on the net, Mitchell Kanashkevich <http://www.pbase.com/mitchellk81/> This guy has some fantastic images of India. You should check them out.
I am on a Mac, so all this applies to Photoshop CS2 for the Mac. I think most of this should be applicable to a Windows
version of Photoshop and Elements. OK so how to make a Tritone image:
First open your image, either in RAW or JPG. Go through your normal workflow. Make all your layer adjustments, levels,
curves, and any other adjustments you feel you need to do to tweak and balance the image. Now flatten the image.
Next, go to Image>Mode>Grayscale in the Menu. This will give you an unremarkable B&W image. Not much to look at, but
unbelievably many people stop here and claim this as their finished B&W image. Not us, let’s go on. Now go back up to
the menu and this time select Image>Mode>Duotone.
This will bring up a the Duotone options. Under the Type pull-down menu, select Tritone. Now you are given three options
of ink to use. Here is where you can get creative. You can use the inks I am going to suggest in the next paragraph or
use the preloaded inks under the Load button. If you click the dialog’s Load button you will be taken to the Presets
folder. The Presets folder contains all kinds of fun stuff, but we are concerned just with the next folder called
Duotone. Select the Duotone folder then the Tritone folder. Once in here you will be give a choice of three more folders;
Gray Tritones, PANTONE® Tritones and Process Tritones. Open anyone of these folders and select any of the choices. If
you don’t like what you get, try another one. If you don’t like any of them try my combination below.
What Mitch and I use for the most part is Ink 1: Black; Ink 2: PANTONE 1205 C; Ink 3: FOCOLTONE 5012. Select between
Pantone, Focoltone and other inks by clicking on the square ink sample in the dialog box. Once you have three inks you
like loaded, press ok.
At this point the lovely balanced image you had before is lost and the image looks pretty dark. Have no fear. Now go to
Image>Mode>RGB to switch the mode back to RGB. Now go back to your Levels adjusment and crank up those highlights and
mid-tones to a level you like. What I often do now is make a adjustment level for Selective Color. I then select the
blacks from the pull down menu. I then boost the black level of the black color choice up 10 to 15%. This gives me some
richer blacks and a nice contrast level.
And there you have it! Now just go back to your normal work flow for any last minute tweaks and sharpening.
I hope this helps and give you a “B&W” image you can be proud of.
Matt Brandon Bio
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