Assignment 19: Stencils

Adjusting Contrast:

1. Open the photo you want to use in Photoshop. If you are merging several photos together, do that before moving onto the next step.

2. Keep the original picture as a locked background layer. Make a copy of that layer to work with.

3. Change your picture to black and white. You can either do this my desaturating it, or changing the image mode to grayscale, or my favorite way, by using the channel mixer and setting it to monochrome. The channel mixer is my favorite because it gives you the most control over the image.

4. Add an adjustment layer for levels. Bring the black and white points to the center to make the picture high contrast (just black and white, no gray). If the contrast looks good in one area, but not in another, you may need to use multiple adjustment layers and erase some parts out of each layer.

Smoothing out the speckles
After adjusting the levels, your image may have a lot of speckles or dots across it instead of large areas of solid color. To smooth these out: Make a copy of the highest layer in your layer palette that has the photo in it. (You should be copying a layer with the photo, not copying an adjustment layer).

Run the median filter on it (filter --> noise --> median.) You may have to touch up some areas by hand with a small paintbrush, too.

Checking that the stencil will hold together:

The next step is to make sure that all the white parts OR all the black parts are connected to each other, like a maze. If you keep all the white parts together, then you need to make sure there are no white islands - no white areas completely surrounded by black. If you keep all the black parts together, then you need to make sure there are no black islands - no black areas completely surrounded by white. You may have to use a brush to paint white or black bridges between parts of your image. I recommend doing this on its own layer.

There's a good diagram of this on http://designsfrompenny.com/what-is-stenciling/:


and an example of a finished stencil showing the islands filled with paint, and the bridges:


Grading: 5 points total

2 points quality of the image (creativity & composition of the photoshop design)
1 point connecting all the white or black areas (understanding how the bridges work for a stencil)
2 points spray painting technique (crisp lines, even application of paint)