Duotone

You can save money on your project by using just two spot colors. The main advantage of choosing duotone is that you only need two color plates, reducing the cost of printing. Also, by choosing the colors you use, you can match the colors you want exactly, such as Pantones or your company's signature color. The drawback is that your project will be limited to the colors that can be produced by mixing just two colors, so you will not be able to recreate full color images in duotone.

Duotone images are like CMYK images, but instead of using four pre-determined colors to reproduce your image, they use two colors of your choice. They are created by combining two grayscales of different colors, like the example below.

Multichannel images are an advanced form of duotone. They combine grayscale images and solid color channels to add a punch of color, like in this example:

Duotone images can create a variety of artistic effects, and add excitement or ambience to your project. So if your project has few or no images and just a couple specific colors, duotone might be for you.

Help Topics

RGB vs CMYK
Spot Colors
Duotone
Grayscale
Gradients
Resolution
Bleed & Border
File Formats
Font Types
Prepress Checklist
Gathering Files