Expert: Candice Anderson - 4/7/2008

Question
Hi,

I'm an illustrator and i'm having my next book printed. It is due to have a colour cover and my printer told me it is cheaper to use 2 colours or 3 colours in CMYK rather than full colour. Now, i've been reading around and i can use photoshop fairly well but i'm a bit confused by this. Can anyone help me out and explain to me how to limit my colours? Sorry if it is a stupid question... I've just been doing some colour tests and was wondering if this meant i'd be able to do a cover with many shades of say Cyan and Magenta- as long as no shade has any yellow in it? does that make sense? if any one knows of an easy way i can tell how i am only colouring with 2 or 3 colours how to do this.... thanks!

Answer
what they are saying is that if you only use two colors - like red and blue, then they don't have to use all of their colors in their printer...and you save money.

the easiest way to do this:
choose your two colors that you want
go to file, new, and choose grayscale
go to image, mode, duo tone.
When prompted, choose your two colors in two of the squares.
Everything will now be in two color ;)
same way works with three color.