Duotone photos in your brand colours: mono, duotone and wash

A duotone photo swaps a picture's natural colours for two chosen ones: a dark colour for the shadows and a light colour for the highlights, with every tone in between blended from the pair. Done in your brand colours, it turns any photograph into something that clearly belongs to you. In Gradiently you can tint a photo three ways, mono, duotone or a wash, and duotone and wash take their colours straight from the design's Mark, so the photo and the background always agree.

How a duotone photo works

Think of the photo as black and white first. Every pixel has a brightness from 0 to 100 percent. A duotone then paints the darkest pixels in your shadow colour, the brightest in your highlight colour, and everything else at the matching point along the ramp between them. The result keeps all the detail of the photo, but none of its original colour.

The trick that makes a duotone look good rather than muddy is contrast between the two ends. A very dark shadow and a very light highlight keep faces and products legible. Two mid tones produce a flat, murky picture. For the history and broader uses of the look, see the duotone effect.

Mono, duotone and wash: three ways to tint

How to make a duotone photo in Gradiently

1. 1

   Add the photo

   Upload or paste your own, or choose one from the free stock photos in the Studio.

2. 2

   Open photo editing

   Select the photo and open its editing panel, where light, colour, filters and tint live.

3. 3

   Choose Duotone under Mark colours

   The photo is remapped to the Mark's palette at once. Try Wash and Mono too; it costs nothing to compare.

4. 4

   Set the contrast

   Raise contrast if the result looks flat, and brightness if faces fall into the shadow colour.

5. 5

   Crop into a shape

   Frame it as a square, a circle, an arch or a blob to suit the layout.

6. 6

   Swap the Mark to test

   Change the design's Mark and the tint follows, so you can try several looks on the same photo.

Filters, light and colour for the finish

Tint sets the colour family; the other adjustments decide the feel. They sit in three groups, and the presets are a fast way to start before fine tuning. If the photo is a product shot, get the background right first: product photo backgrounds covers that.

Crop shapes: arches, circles and blobs

A tinted photo in a soft shape reads as designed rather than dropped in. Arches feel architectural and calm, lovely for interiors, florists and wedding work, and a natural fit for photographer branding. Circles suit people: team pages, speakers, testimonials. Blobs are playful and suit food, kids' brands and anything informal. Keep to one shape per design so the set looks consistent.

If text sits on the photo itself, making text readable on photos covers placement, and a consistent tint is one of the simplest habits behind brand consistency.

A duotone in CSS

On a website you can build the same effect with blend modes: make the photo greyscale, multiply it over the highlight colour, then lighten with the shadow colour.

.duotone {
  position: relative;
  background: #fbcfe8; /* highlight colour */
}

.duotone img {
  display: block;
  width: 100%;
  filter: grayscale(1) contrast(1.1);
  mix-blend-mode: multiply;
}

.duotone::after {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  inset: 0;
  background: #1e1b4b; /* shadow colour */
  mix-blend-mode: lighten;
  pointer-events: none;
}