Digital BW, The Print

Sorry I don't have any advice to your problem, but I've been wondering about
Duotones for some time, and now seems like as good an opportunity to bring
it up as any.

What am I missing about the attraction of Duotones on a desktop printer? I
get it as far as on press goes: subtle color complexity adds depth so two
shades of gray are richer than one, three are richer than two, etc. So for
an offset press you are defining how the printer will utilize his two black
ink shades, or three, or four...

But when printing on a color inkjet printer, which has anywhere from 4 to 7
shades of ink to start with, I can't see any reason not to just convert a
grayscale image to RGB and pull a set of curves, where you can put any color
into any tone you want. If you've got a good printer profile you'll have a
pretty good WYSIWYG workflow which gives the driver the RGB data it's
looking for, and you have the full RGB tool set to work with, which is
broader than what is available in Duotone mode.

So it seems to me that if one has a Duotone that they like and they know it
works it might be the easiest way to get there, but once any tweaking needs
to be done I'd personally feel much more comfortable doing it with an
everyday tool like curves than the cumbersome Duotone dialog box.

But is there something I'm missing?

Todd

>> Hi-
>> 
>> I am printing duotones and getting results that are off from the
>> monitor image. Monitor is calibrated, papers are profiled. Color files
>> look excellent. I don't know much about duotones, but am trying to get
>> similar look to toning I had when in traditional darkroom. Using
>> Pantone colors in Photoshop 7.  What would make results better? Would I
>> be better off using RGB and colorizing in in hue/saturation dialogue
>> box?
>> 
>> Thanks for any advice.
>> 
> Dennis,
> 
> Even though your monitor is calibrated, it does not mean the prints will
> come out looking like what you see on screen. You need a printer profile for
> the specific ink, paper and printer you are using in order to get a close
> match. These can be purchase for a very modest price and will be money well
> spent if you want to work with duotones and a full color ink set. However,
> keep in mind that the closer the image approaches dead neutral the more
> difficult it is to get accurate matches.
> 
> Martin Wesley