Photoshop / Illustrator Stencil Creation Tutorial [Starring Rob & Corinne]

[Load3r]

Ok so here is a demonstration of how I currently like to make stencils. This tutorial makes use of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS2 which I know not everyone has access too. The bulk of it can really be done in The Gimp or Paint Shop Pro (is that even still around?), except for the live tracing. Anyone know if Inkscape can do something similar? Anyways, here we go.

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First I have take two screen shots (that handy print screen button beside F12 comes in handy here) of Rob & Corrine doing their snip-snip scissor outro thing. After cropping and putting them both into one image, we have this.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a209/Load3r/threadhead_stencil_tut1-1.jpg

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Next I converted it to a grayscale image and coloured the background white. I left a small outline of black so that I have a hard outline to work with while adjusting sliders later.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a209/Load3r/threadhead_stencil_tut2.jpg

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Now I have made use of the dodge/burn tool to further define what I want to be black and what I want to be white. The blur tool was also used to smooth out the texture of Corinne's hat. Very small details like that can sometimes leads to degrading of structural integrity and enthusiasm when cutting it out. This was followed (I think, should have wrote it down) a gaussian blur of about 0.2 ti take the hard edge of things. Finally, levels was used to make the stark contrast.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a209/Load3r/threadhead_stencil_tut3.jpg

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Now comes Illustrator. Opened the image, selected it and hit the live trace button that comes up on the top toolbar. Adjust your sliders here and there till you get a nice looking stencil without too much loss of details. What I like to do is take path fitting, minimum area, and corner angle down to 0 or 1. Then start adjusting the threshold. After that, start to claw back the settings I lowered a minute before until almost all of the tiny bit of white and black disappear.
Exported it as a jpg and brought it back into Photoshop.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a209/Load3r/threadhead_stencil_tut4.jpg

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Now comes the final (and longest) part, filling in the bridges and doing detail clean up. I kept the original image from the first step beside the one I was working on so I could constantly compare without having to switch any windows. There isn't much to explain here except I used the paint brush and squinted a whole lot. I spent a lot of time on the eyes and eyebrows trying to convey a better sense of personality. That and Rob was looking like alien autopsy.

[Before & After]
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a209/Load3r/threadhead_stencil_tut5.jpghttp://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a209/Load3r/threadhead_stencil_tut7.jpg

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So that's it. I am pretty happy with how this turned out. I had taken the screenshots about two weeks ago and had been meaning to do this ever since.

If anyone has any additional tips and tricks to save time, feel free to speak up and I will update this tutorial (citing you as a reference).

The only thing left now is to print it off and cut it out, which I am now far too exhausted to do even if I had a printer.

[Stefaknee]

That is so helpful!
(Even if I can't see half the words.)
Thanks!

I have GIMP, I've just been using the threshold button.
But it never turns out right.

[uvreactive]

Wonderful job on the tutorial! Thank you for taking the time : )

I like using the Stamp filter to make my stencils (basically all of what you did in Illustrator except in a filter in Photoshop).

[Load3r]

Well you can just use threshold in lue of the Illustrator step. Live Trace is based around setting a threshold, then just tracing in and filling it in.

So try this intead of the live trace step. First do a guassian blur of about 1 or 2 pixels. Then pull out threshold and find something that pleases you and take that result to final step.

And sorry about the blurry words on that one image. Photobucket is restricting my image dimensions.

[Load3r]

The nice thing about live trace is that once you have traced your image, you can scale it to any size without any loss of detail because its a vector image at that point. Makes it easy to fill up a whole page for printing

[kate]

Nice job on the stencil, that's really great work. Thanks for the tutorial!

[ryanmoore]

now if only i had photoshop........* scratches head*

[pinoyblaze]

so gimpshop doesn't support the live tracing feature? is there another procedure special for gimp?

[Jelfish]

Thanks for the tutorial!

I tried it out and instead of using illustrator (which I don't have), I did this:

Edit: I forgot to preface this with the fact that I'm using Photoshop

Starting from your third pic:

http://forum.threadbanger.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=147&d=1186473283

First I wanted to select everything that wasn't white. To do this, I selected a color range by going to Select>Color Range, clicked on a white part of the picture and set the fuzziness as low as possible. I've never used Gimp, but this function probably exists.

Next I inversed the selection. Now, I'm selecting everything that's not white (black and grays).

Then I smoothed the selection by going to Select>Modify>Smooth and used 1 px.

So now I have my stencil shape selected, I save the selection (Select>Save Selection), then make 2 new layers, the top one all white and the next one all black. I load the selection I saved earlier and delete it from the white layer to expose the black underneath and I get this:

http://forum.threadbanger.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=149&d=1186473874

If that's not smooth enough for you, you can increase the number of pixels on the Smooth function, though I personally like it a bit edgy. You can delete any of the black spots that are unnecessary or too small when you're cutting.

I apologize for not having more pictures, but none of the steps I make really change the picture, just the selection. I haven't made the bridges yet of course.

The reason I made this is that it skips using a separate program for vector imaging, which hopefully means that you can do this with Gimp (sorry, I don't really know Gimp to put directions, but I think the steps I used are pretty standard imaging functions). Hope that helps.

Jelfish

[ladyjanewriter]

You totally got Rob's funny little corner-of-the-mouth thing when he smiles. Fanfrickentastic job!

[Plasma]

Sweet! That's exactly how I made my tag, except I didn't have photoshop, so i couldn't make it perfect.


Amazing tutorial!

[ryanmoore]

now if only my brother would put photoshop on my computer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sewittogether]

Question:
what is the Print screen button for?
that supposedly take screen shots

[pinoyblaze]

Question:
what is the Print screen button for?
that supposedly take screen shots

yup yup

[crystalzemoose]

yeah,i use photoshop and paint.net(watered down version of photoshop.) :D

[pinoyblaze]

would this better belong in the tutorial board?

[Jelfish]

Yes! Somehow I missed this one. Thanks :)

[pinoyblaze]

np :P

[Smuttny]

Gotta get my hands on a copy of Illustrator, but this was very helpful indeed.

Thanks a bunch for the post. :D

[rosik]

nice tutorial man! going to try it soon >.<

[glass__onion]

sooooooooooo cool......
good tute!

[fifilafoo]

thats a really good tut for people who want it fast and done with

[krazykirk]

Don't forget that if you go the Illustrator route, when you use the Live Trace feature, it becomes a vector image! So you can make it extra big and then fix it up in photoshop if you want =)

[sourcream]

So I dunno if anyone still reads this thread but I'm having trouble with the tutorial. I am completely adobe illustrator illiterate and have no idea what the dodge/burn tool is or anything. I have a picture that I'm trying to turn into a stencil and the furthest I could get was to turn it into grayscale. Sad...I know. This is my first time ever making one of these though...so can someone help me?? Thanks!!!

[AnneThropic]

Neat!

[kalihix]

hey Load3r... yeh I still use Paint Shop Pro 9. For a long time, I had no choice but to use it cause my old computer was too weak to support Photoshop.. I think (CS and CS2) without freezing after a few clicks.

I became so accustomed to Paint Shop Pro and I've tried moving back to Photoshop CS3 a few times and get frustrated which I do get... very easily. PSP is like Diet-Photoshop and for the things I do (stencil art, photo editing and such) PSP has made me a happy camper... that and it works great with my Wacom tablet. One day....

cheers

[nightowlbunny]

yay i finally found this tute...it is amazing....i can't wait to try it