CS3 Duotone Library

jdryan3

I was going to do a Duotone in CS3 on my Mac. But I noticed that there were no sample presets to load in my library. :scratch

So now the REALLY stupid question: did the ones I have for CS/CS2 on my PC come from Adobe, or did I download these from some site? :dunno Or Scott Kelby's CS Book (or other CD)? A very thorough search of Adobe's Knowledgebase gave me nada.

Most were warm grey, cool grey, some PMS, etc. They were nice as a jumping off point to creating my own.

BinaryFx

jdryan3 wrote:

Most were warm grey, cool grey, some PMS, etc. They were nice as a jumping off point to creating my own.

Yes, the Adobe CD, perhaps on the "Extras" CD if not hidden away on the first.

You can use earlier version presets in the new version too, if you can find them on the old CD but not the new one/s.

Is this for true duotone mode printing on press or inkjet simulation?


Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx

USAIR

Can't you point your file browser to the CS/CS2 folder with the presets in them?

Fred

jdryan3

BinaryFx wrote:

Yes, the Adobe CD, perhaps on the "Extras" CD if not hidden away on the first.

You can use earlier version presets in the new version too, if you can find them on the old CD but not the new one/s.

Is this for true duotone mode printing on press or inkjet simulation?

I thought so, but Adobe makes no mention of it on their website (that I coudl find). And it is for inkjet simulation, or Mpix prints. Not press.

USAIR wrote:

Can't you point your file browser to the CS/CS2 folder with the presets in them?

Fred

My PS7/CS/CS2 was on a PC. My CS3 is on Mac. Hopefully they can be reused on the Mac as Stephen says, once I get the PC back up and running.

BinaryFx

jdryan3 wrote:

And it is for inkjet simulation, or Mpix prints. Not press.

I did a clean install tonight of CS2 on Win OS and the preset files were installed inside the program folder by defult. Perhaps this is not so on the Mac or with CS3 on Mac or Win, I don't know. I did not have to hunt them down. If not on a second CD, they should be in a folder on the main CD. Perhaps do a search of the CD or your drive for any .ado files.

Will you be converting from duotone mode (mono/duo/tri/quad) to your RGB working space and performing tweaks there, or do you just print from true duotone mode and let Photoshop convert on the fly when printing? I am in prepress, so I use this mode for press (rarely), not inkjet - so I am interested in how others use this mode in these settings. That being said, the key is starting from a great grayscale file, whether for press or inkjet.

I once had a discussion with Thomas Knoll about this at the ColorSync Users List. Adobe never intended Duotone mode to be used for accurate composite display/print or proofing, it was intended to produce spot colour separations from EPS mode files placed in layout or illustration software or when printed direct from Photoshop as separations. That you can print composite and do mode conversions is great but beyond the original scope of intended separated output for press, so YMMV. That being said, there are usually no real problems in doing what you are doing (apart from no support for CM).

Hopefully they can be reused on the Mac as Stephen says, once I get the PC back up and running.

The Adobe supplied duo/tri/quad preset files (filename.ado) are cross platform and should be exchangeable between various versions (forward and backward AFAIK). These are the files saved from the main Duotone Options dialog box. These files contain the transfer curve and ink colour data.

One can also save out the transfer curve function (filename.atf) independently of the curve/ink .ado file if desired from inside the Duotone Curve dialog box.

This next bit may be going a bit far for your internal workflow and is more for archival or passing on to service providers to help ensure consistent results. It is a "best practice" to use a note in the file info metadata comments or by using a filename or read me file that includes both the dotgain/gamma of the grayscale file before the conversion to duotone mode (as duotone mode does not support ICC CM) and also the Spot working space dot gain setting (found in colour settings, which defaults to 20%).

When changing colour modes from Grayscale to Duotone, the file will become untagged and "non colour managed". The colour settings Spot working space will be used to define the tonality of the duotone file, rather than the previous grayscale tag or assumed working space setting. If the grayscale file was say 2.2 gamma and the spot WS setting was 20% dot gain, the image would appear lighter in dutone mode, when the actual grayscale values have not changed and no transfer curve has been applied yet.

As you have CS3, you may wish to try Adobe Camera Raw to open your camera raw files/dng or your rendered JPG/TIF/PSD files (a new feature of ACR previously only available in Lightroom) and perform a grayscale conversion and colour toning to compare to your regular workflow/results.


Regards,

Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

jdryan3

BinaryFx wrote:

I did a clean install tonight of CS2 on Win OS and the preset files were installed inside the program folder by defult. Perhaps this is not so on the Mac or with CS3 on Mac or Win, I don't know. I did not have to hunt them down. If not on a second CD, they should be in a folder on the main CD. Perhaps do a search of the CD or your drive for any .ado files.

Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

Found them! :whew In the CS3 folder Application -> Presets ->Duotones. The bigger issue is my ignorance of how OSX and/or CS3 stores/loads those presets by default. Once I went upstream in the directory structure I found that I was in Users->jdryan3->library->Application Support->Adobe->Abobe Photoshop CS3->Presets->Duotones by default. And all those preset folders are empty.