How to make a duotone effect

Two bold inks, punchy contrast and a fine poster grain.

3 min read · Updated 2026-10-30

What it is

A duotone shows a photo in two colours instead of full colour: one ink for the shadows and one for the highlights, with every tone in between mixed from the two. It started as a printing technique for richer black-and-white photos, and became a graphic style of its own when designers swapped the inks for bright, unexpected pairs.

Duotone is the simplest way to make photos look like they belong to one brand. The original colours of the picture stop mattering — a beach, a street and a face all come out in the same two inks — so a whole campaign, a feed or a website suddenly feels consistent, even when the photos come from ten different sources.

Where it is used

Duotone works for music and event posters, conference and tech branding, social feeds that need one recognisable look, album and podcast covers, and hero images on websites. It also rescues weak photos: a dull, badly lit picture often looks great once it is reduced to two strong colours.

Made in Paletoo with this mix:

A magazine cover: the portrait in navy and coral behind the headline.

A festival cover: the crowd photo in two inks under white type.

A running club post: the runner cut-out in navy and coral.

How to make it, step by step

Open your design and select the photo. Pictures with a good range from deep shadow to bright light give the richest duotones.
Open the Effects tab and find Mixes; press All if you do not see Duotone poster.

A podcast post open in Paletoo, the host’s portrait selected and the Mixes open
Press Duotone poster. Three steps go on: Basic pushes contrast and clarity, a Gradient map maps the shadows to navy and the lights to coral and cream, and Grain adds a fine poster texture.

Duotone poster pressed: Basic, Gradient map and Grain under Applied, the portrait in navy and coral
Open the Gradient map. Its Gradient runs from shadows on the left to highlights on the right: click a stop to change its colour, drag it to move the point where one ink turns into the other.

The Gradient map step open: the Gradient with its three stops, Contrast, Reverse and Levels
Use Contrast in the same step to make the two inks meet softly or hard. Its presets, like Blue duotone, Sunset and Noir, are good starting pairs.
Press Export. Change the colours later and every photo with the same mix can be matched in seconds.

Watch it

The one-click mix

In Paletoo the whole stack is one mix, Duotone poster. One click puts every step on the selected object, one undo takes them all off, and each step stays an ordinary effect you can change, reorder or remove.

Its steps: Basic Gradient map · navy, coral, cream Grain · Fine film

Open this mix in Paletoo

Make it your own

Start with the dark ink. It carries the shape of the picture, so it needs to be really dark — navy, deep purple, forest green or near-black. The light ink sets the mood: coral and peach feel warm, mint and sky blue feel fresh, acid yellow feels loud.

A third, lighter stop at the end of the gradient keeps the highlights from turning into a flat block of colour; the mix uses cream for that. Remove it for a stricter, two-colour screen-print look.

For a consistent feed, save the stack: once the gradient is right, the same mix on every picture gives you the same two inks without picking colours again. If a photo comes out too dark, raise Brightness in the Basic step rather than changing the inks.