Duotone images are printed with two inks. In the bad old days when colors where exorbitantly expensive it was one of the few ways to add a little warmth or variety into an image. Today duotones are still a great way to save the cost of extra ink and printing plates, but often their effect is… well, used just for effect.

This image was created by converting a color photo I took a couple years ago, to black and white, and then to a duotone in Photoshop. Anytime you want to create a duotone it must be converted to a grayscale image first. I love how after doing a quick curves adjustment between Pantone 8-1-4C and 153-1-5C make the photo look as if it where taken 100 years ago.

I used colors from Pantones “new” Goe system. This system is meant to supplement the old pantone system as well as solve some of the problems with the old system. For example the Goe system is arranged chromatically, it is also designed to grow. Which means that when you are searching for a certain tone of blue, flipping 5 different sections is not necessary. The Goe system also has the advantage of offering more colors than the traditional system with less mixing basis.

However, from what has been gathered the Goe system seem to not be GOEing (note the bad pun) anywhere. About a week and a Half ago my group was meeting with a couple printers, and they had no clue what the Goe system was. Which is sad because, it really does make a lot of sense. Mix base color with white, mix base color with black, and get a massive amount of tints and tones.