Duotoned Images

When combining several images into a collage or photo strip, duotoning the images can help unify them and tie the photos to the site's color scheme. To produce these images which were used on the services page of the retirement home, I used an adjustment layer to give a gold/orange tint to the photos.

I began with these 3 images. As you can see they are very different shapes and sizes.

I used the Image > Image size controls described in the resizing images lesson and then used cropping techniques to make all images 120 height and 76 width. In addition I found that the fisherman and woman needed to face to the left so they would draw attention to the content. To flip the image I first made a copy of the photo (many Photoshop commands do not work on the background layer of an image). Next I selected the photo with the selection arrow, and then I accessed Edit > Transform > Flip horizontal.

I placed these images into one tall thin document as shown below. Next I selected the top photo layer, and accessed the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layer window. I selected Hue Saturation.

I made sure my foreground color was set to a shade of orange which corresponded to my Web page color scheme.

This dialog box appeared. I selected the colorize box in the lower right corner of the window. The duotone was automatically set to the orange color I had placed in the foreground. This is a good starting point for my duotone, however I found I needed to bump up the saturation level to 44 to achieve the look I wanted.

After selecting OK. I see a new layer has been added to the document. There is an icon which represents my adjustment layer and the images are all duotoned in the pumpkin color.

Finally I added a black stroke, 1 pixel, inside. This helps separate the images and define the photo strip within the page.