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I publish books of black and white photographs, and usually do so in duotone (black plus a Pantone gray). I have Affinity Photo, and am thinking of getting Publisher, but I still have to use Photoshop for manipulating the duotone balances, as I don't see anything in Photo for this. Has it been added while I wasn't paying attention, or is there something in Publisher to do this? I'd really like to get away from Adobe. Thanks.

Edited by duotone
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22 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

True, I guess you could try something with adjustment curves but this is really just fiddling in lack of the real thing.

You would just get CMYK simulation, nothing you could use with just two inks.

It might be possible to create two greyscale versions (with appropriate curves) of the plate and set them over each other and set upper one to print with Pantone and overprint. I though think this is too hard an exercise to be used in normal production.

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6 minutes ago, Fixx said:

It might be possible to create two greyscale versions (with appropriate curves) of the plate and set them over each other and set upper one to print with Pantone and overprint. I though think this is too hard an exercise to be used in normal production.

Yes, that's what is done in the referred post but as you mentioned, it is really just playing with curves without proper control.

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1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

You can do something like this in lack of the real thing: ...

That is, you can have black grayscale version with curves and levels (on gray channel) on top of the PMS version. I think that the PMS layer cannot have adjustments applied, at least when I tried it turned to CMYK (but you could of course process a grayscale directly on pixel level and save it as a separate image). ...

Fake duotones are a black box effect that are difficult to pull off in print and are entirely dependent upon the print device + their operators. They are also better with certain images than others. Your example would be a pile of mud on paper.

David Blatner wrote up a good description several years ago:

https://creativepro.com/extending-tonal-range-photoshop-with-duotones/

They do/can work OK as a quickly done effect for web sites--indeed, it's how some websites "create" them for their services. But otherwise, no.

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2 hours ago, Lagarto said:

You can do something like this in lack of the real thing:

duotone.jpg.c9a7da9d5f206b66610fa60e966ad07f.jpg

duotone_black.thumb.jpg.ac4c0500ccba4de582e9ca9a1c9dfd3b.jpg

duotone_warmgray.thumb.jpg.2a42ec726972c4f910bf82b68c2d6621.jpg

That is, you can have black grayscale version with curves and levels (on gray channel) on top of the PMS version. I think that the PMS layer cannot have adjustments applied, at least when I tried it turned to CMYK (but you could of course process a grayscale directly on pixel level and save it as a separate image). 

I do not quite understand the logic of this. Sometimes I think i need to turn PMS to K100 and back to PMS to keep it a spot color, and it seems that applying the gray curve on the black plate helps the top layer from converting to CMYK. 

The PMS has overprint defined but it has no use here (as the spot color is the bottom layer). As the top layer has Multiply blend mode on the total effect can be approximated to some extent.

Attached are an Affinity Publisher document and a PDF. (Note that the Pulbisher doc is created with latest beta so latest Photo beta is needed to open it.)

duotone_testcurves.afpub

duotone_testcurves.pdf

Thanks for this! I think the best way forward is just to pay Adobe their ransom for PS when the next book comes around. I still want to try Publisher, though. I'm hoping it will accept the duotones from PS.

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1 hour ago, duotone said:

Thanks for this! I think the best way forward is just to pay Adobe their ransom for PS when the next book comes around. I still want to try Publisher, though. I'm hoping it will accept the duotones from PS.

It, if it is an dcs/eps, should load. It will export as cmyk or rgb, whatever model you export your pdf for print as. What it will not be is a two-color (Pantone + black or whatever). If you are actually using spot color, you cannot use your dcs/eps or multi-channel (don't even know if they will import) to print as such.

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  • 1 year later...

It's a simple function in PSD, and the lack of it is the only thing stopping me investing in APhoto at this point.

No point in buying it but still having to pay Adobe's monthly ransom just for the ability to convert images to duo or tritone.

Is it even on the radar to be added at some point? I keep checking in but don't see it given any airtime aside from this thread.

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+234 for duo, tri & quadtones!

I haven't done any duotones in quite a while, likely over 15 years, and the "classic" EPS workflow always felt to me like an ugly workaround because old school layout apps couldn't handle these things internally.

BUT:

It shouldn't be considered rocket science to create and preview duo/tri/quadtones on the fly these days. Serif, just make the spot color objects to stick to their assigned colors, no matter their adjustment layers or masks. Just a tick box or something: "Do NOT convert to CMYK". Or display any active spot color as a separate channel in Adjustment settings. Really, it should "just work".

Anyway…

I had a look at one of my many old duotone brochures that I'd originally lay out in XPress 3 or 4. This one was from 2003, and I already had a "quick'n'dirty" InDesign 2 conversion from 2007, so it was easy to reopen in ID CS5.5 …

id_duotone_from_qxd.png.0580a7f361c7f427ea66aa2953b3e36c.png

export as IDML and import into Publisher. There were a few duotone photos and a black/spot vector illustration I originally made in Freehand 9 and placed as EPS. AI CS5 still can open FH9 files, so I also converted it into editable paths via Designer and placed into Publisher.

Some of the duotone photos had feathered borders, but I also still had the original PSD with the mask layer which I have copied directly into Publisher as well. Masks work fine the K part of duotone but not with spot colors. Neither do adjustments. So the spot color part of these photos had to be processed separately in the Photo persona and saved as a flat grayscale JPEG for colorization in Publisher. For duotone preview I can use the Darken blend mode on the spot color layers. Just don't forget to switch back to Normal blend mode on PDF/X export:

apu_duotone_sim.png.0ae21c9d0148fe5ac403dd4358fe32c3.png

 

It took me some time to figure it all out – I should have read this thread first, haha – but it's workable:

apu_duotone_sim_pdfx3.png.c63660a38f6347489d84140756f48eb1.png

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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  • 10 months later...

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