Homework 3 - Duotone Feedback:

Student Findings:
I found the duotones more difficult than I imagined.   By that I mean that I had trouble finding photos that I thought looked better as a duotone than as a full color photo. Duotones just don't look good (at least to my eye) on original full color photos, on photos that have a lot of activity, nor on photos that are essentially dark in nature (unless you lighten them up). That was contrary to my expectations for some reason.

Image submitted:

Feedback from Jean:
The key to making a duotone is working with the levels and the curves (you may find you revisit each as you progress through making the duotone). All color has a full range of greyscale in it, and black and white (or greyscale) imagry has room for more detail, more tonality and actually richer detail than color. Think of b&w films versus color - black and white is more sensitive to the nuances of light which is the essence of color.

I reworked your duotone concentrating on lifting the mid-range values (in your levels - mid greys) I also worked a little with the curves to coax out more detail. you will see that the reworked duotone is lighter (a little too much actually) but I wanted to demonstrate that it was the mid values - the mid greys that needed adjusting so there is more contrast, more detail, and a crisper hue.

Remember too your original photograph will determine to a large degree how successful a duotone will be. The lighting is still really important even in the age of digital photos and Photoshop!

In any event your composite is clean, and you are off to a good start.

FILTER>SHARPEN:
What is the background image of? It's really nice but is a little soft in the focus, so under the filter menu>sharpen I worked just a bit with sharpening it. This is a nice tool, but can degrade the image quality so you have to use a light touch in order to generate optimum results. Play with it and you will see what I mean.

FILE SIZE FOR EMAILING HOMEWORK:
One more thing, your image was HUGE 20 mgs is far too large!! both in size and format. It's good to work with high res images, but save a version for emailing to me in the future that has more modest dimensions and file size. For example, your dutone that you emailed me was approx 17x12 inches with a resolution of 180 = 20.3 mgs.

The test duotone I sent back to you I adjusted the file (under the image menu>image size) to approx 7x 5 inches with a resolution of 120 = 2.01 mgs.

As demonstrated in my 2nd duotone video in lesson 3 (video tutorials) you can reduce the size further when you saved it as a jpeg (do a file > save as - not just a save) you then have a chance to optimize the image and apply further compression thereby reducing the file size. With the 'preview' option selected you can gage the quality.

The good thing with starting out with great resolution like you did was that your image can handle some compression (reduction of info to make file smaller) and it still looks great.

Image reworked by Jean: