From quad- + tone.
quadtone (plural quadtones)
- (music) An interval of four whole tones.
- A picture printed in four shades.
1995, Adele Droblas Greenberg, Seth Greenberg, “Converting from One Mode to Another”, in Fundamental Photoshop, 2nd edition, Osborne McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 380:In Photoshop’s Duotone mode you can create monotones, duotones, tritones, and quadtones—grayscale images to which you add one, two, three, or four colors.
2003, Duncan Evans, “Duotones and Tritones”, in A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Portrait Photography, AVA Publishing SA, →ISBN, page 115:When using tritones or quadtones (in which three colours are blended together) all the secondary colours are mixed together.
2010, David Präkel, “Duotone”, in The Visual Dictionary of Photography, AVA Publishing SA, →ISBN, page 97:The two colours need not be black and grey; computer duotones can be created from a greyscale original in any two colours; tritones use three inks and quadtones four.