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InDesign 2.0: Photoshop, Duotones into InDesign

By Nick Hodge | October 4, 2004

[1546] InDesign CS LogoVisit the new InDes­ign Prepress Sec­tion: Adobe InDes­ign: Prepress Tech­niques

Duo­tones: Pho­toshop to InDesign

What are duo­tones? From the Pho­toshop 7.0 Online help file:

Duo­tones are used to increase the tonal range of a gray­scale image. Although a gray­scale repro­duc­tion can dis­play up to 256 levels of gray, a print­ing press can repro­duce only about 50 levels of gray per ink. This means that a gray­scale image prin­ted with only black ink can look sig­ni­fic­antly coarser than the same image prin­ted with two, three, or four inks, each indi­vidual ink repro­du­cing up to 50 levels of gray.


Some­times duo­tones are prin­ted using a black ink and a gray ink–the black for shad­ows and the gray for midtones and high­lights. More fre­quently, duo­tones are prin­ted using a colored ink for the high­light color. This tech­nique pro­duces an image with a slight tint to it and sig­ni­fic­antly increases the image’s dynamic range. Duo­tones are ideal for two-color print jobs with a spot color (such as a PANTONE Color) used for accent.

Duo­tones is a gen­eric name given to mono­tone, duo­tone, tri­tone etc images. The mono– pre­fix here denotes the num­ber of col­our­ants (plates) in the final file gen­er­ated by Photoshop.

Gen­er­at­ing Duo­tones from Photoshop

The greatest con­trol over true Duo­tones as defined above is going to be in Pho­toshop. How­ever, there is a concept known as fake or poor man’s Duo­tones, which InDes­ign 2.0 sup­ports directly.

The pro­cess of con­vert­ing a col­oured image into a Duo­tone in Pho­toshop starts with con­vert­ing the image to gray­scale. The quick­est, and raw­est method of con­vert­ing is to go Image>Mode>Grayscale

After con­vert­ing to grey­scale, the next step is to Image>Mode>Duotone change the gray­scale into a Duo­tone image. The dia­log box that appears allows you to change the spot col­our that makes up the second col­our. If you would prefer a mono­tone, change the first “Black” ink in the list to the spot col­our. The curve box per­mits tweak­ing of the ink dens­ity where the second col­our is applied.

[1404] duotone in photoshop

How do you get Pho­toshop Duo­tones into InDes­ign 2.0.x?

To place this file in InDes­ign, the format that we need to save the file is Pho­toshop EPS. Pho­toshop EPS is a nice, Com­pos­ite format that per­mits us to print com­pos­ite out­put; includ­ing Com­pos­ite PDF. I am not a major fan of Pho­toshop DCS as a format. (ref: InDes­ign 2.0: Pho­toshop with Spots, InDes­ign and Com­pos­ite PDF)

[1405] duotone in photoshop save eps

In InDes­ign, File>Place the Pho­toshop EPS saved above. Once the image is placed, you will notice that InDes­ign adds a new Swatch to the Window>Swatches palette.

[1406] duotone form photoshop in indesign

From this point, the new Swatch is con­sidered a Spot col­our. Man­aging this is the same as man­aging Spot col­ours in InDes­ign: through the Ink Man­ager.

Note: There is a known (and you do read Readme’s, right?) a doc­u­mented bug with InDes­ign 2.0: it con­siders the spot colour’s altern­ate col­our space RGB. This means, if you print sep­ar­a­tions where you have Ink aliased the Spot to Pro­cess in the Ink Man­ager, it con­verts the Spot spe­cified in the Pho­toshop EPS to RGB rather than the CMYK altern­ate. The work­around is to make this ele­ment 99.9% Nor­mal Trans­par­ency, and print using the [High Res­ol­u­tion] Trans­par­ency flattener style. The Flattener will cor­rectly con­vert the Spot to its CMYK (Pro­cess) break­down, and per­mit a pure Pro­cess out­put. (ref: InDes­ign 2.0: Print­ing Out­put Choices and Flattener Tricks (includ­ing force Grey­scale export!))


Poor Man’s Duo­tones in InDesign

Gray­scale images can be dir­ectly made into Mono­tones in InDes­ign 2.0. Here, we are assign­ing the Black (K) plate to an altern­ate col­our, includ­ing poten­tially a Spot Color. The user-interface needs to be care­fully described as there is a little twist: some­thing the help file doesn’t quite explain. The order of steps below are crit­ical!

  1. Place the Gray­scale TIFF or Pho­toshop image into InDes­ign 2.0

    [1407] duotone place greyscale into indesign
  2. Open Windows>Swatches
  3. Ensure that the Swatch, Spot or oth­er­wise is in the Swatches list

    [1410] duotone swatch created
  4. Select the Dir­ect Selec­tion Tool

    [1408] duotone direct select
  5. In the Swatches palette, ensure that the Fill is selec­ted at the top:

    [1409] duotone swatch fill
  6. Click inside the Grey­scale image with the Dir­ect Selec­tion Tool
  7. Click on the Swatch you would like to apply to the image:

    [1411] duotone swatch created

The key to this pro­cess is ensur­ing that you have the Fill selec­ted in the Swatches prior to Dir­ect Select­ing the con­tent of a grey­scale image. I do not think the online help in InDes­ign 2.0 clearly explains these steps.

Thanks to Gene Palmiter for sug­gest­ing I write this up. Its been in my head for months.

Topics: mungenet | 1 Comment »

One Response to “InDesign 2.0: Photoshop, Duotones into InDesign”

  1. JJ Lassberg Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 2:26 am

    Thanx a million!

    VERY Help­ful

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