Stencil Effect in Photoshop

The stencil effect in Photoshop makes an image appear as if it was created by placing a stencil on paper and filling the stencil in with spray paint. A photograph can be transformed into an image made out of finely defined masses of color by applying a variety of filters. This effect can not only be created for pictures, but can also be used for text.

Stencil Effect with Pictures

Find a picture that has a good amount of contrast between light and dark that can be exploited using the filters. For your first time, do not use too complex an image, in order to minimize editing.

Filter

Filters are tools within software programming that take code and mix the code up in order to create new code. In Photoshop, filters take images and alter them in randomized or predictable ways. These filters can then be manipulated using a variety of tools. For the stencil effect, the filter of choice is the "cutout" filter, though there are other filters that can be used to achieve the same effect. For this project, click the middle layer and then activate the "cutout" filter by clicking the "filter" drop-down menu and hovering your mouse over "artistic." A drop-down should appear where you can find "cutout." Use this tool to minimize the variety of pixels.

Cleanup

After you've rendered the stencil effect, try to cut down on the number of shades used. Use the "eyedropper" tool to select the color around the spot you want to get rid of and use the "brush" tool to cover those parts. In the environment, create large masses of a single color. For characters, use your own judgment when determining how large the masses of color should be.

Black and White

There are many ways that the image can be made black and white. For artists who prefer to have plenty of control over their art, the best way to switch from black to white is to manually fill in parts with a "Paintbucket." Click "Image," select "Adjustments" and click "Hue/saturation." Click and drag the slider for saturation as far to the left as possible in order to eliminate color.

Text Stenciling

Stencil text effects can be downloaded and added to Photoshop. This text can be made to appear more stencil-like by blurring the text with "Gaussian blur" and airbrushing around the edges.