Greetings. Attempting to understand duotone. I took this a few years ago (through the gift shop window) just after Thanksgiving. I rolled my own processing but the result can be fairly closely replicated using the PS duotone tool (Image->Mode->Duotone on Grayscale Mode images). I have a homegrown plugin that I can map a black-white grayscale to black-orange (nice orange skies like Diane's IR shot ;-). Overlay or Soft Light Blending opacity adjustments with the original grayscale desaturates to taste. This can be done in the Duotone tool by choosing a desaturated target color. For instance, moving the color picker from orange (top right corner with 255-128-0 selected) to the left along the top edge of the color picker. You can see the transformation in the duotone output. Kinda cool.
So, the whole process was Silver Efex to monochrome, Apply black to orange scale (my own plugin), Soft Light Blend (about 40% opacity over monochrome), touch up.
Similar results with Silver Efex to monochrome, Mode change to 8-bit Grayscale, Image->Mode->Duotone, Type:Duotone, Ink 2 use color picker - type in 255-128-0 in RGB typeins), slide color picker along top of box to select a desaturated target (here, somewhere around 254-206-156 or just type that in for previous step), Change mode back to RGB.
Oh, I should say that I used to do this sort of thing by using a solid color fill layer, blending then adjusting the tone. The processes above deliver much more satisfying results (for me). So, thanks again for another great theme. I always learn a lot from working them.
Thanks for looking.
Cheers,
-Michael-