Stencil Art

Today, out task was to select an image from the internet and use Photoshop to create stencil art from the image and to use this in an urban scene.

I first selected an image I would use as my wall art; this piece being an image by Andy Council.

The first part of the editing process was to use the 'Threshold' tool on Photoshop to convert the image to black and white and I could adjust the levels so that I had a preferred amount of light and dark visible. On certain images, the threshold tool can make your image grainy however, this image was a pre-edited image with clean cut edges and one tone colour scheme.

To create the faded edges, I used a Filter called 'Diffused Glow'. Again, I could adjust the 'graininess', 'glow amount' and 'clear amount' so that the image was as I wanted.

The final image.

After I finished editing the stencil, I moved it onto a background image- this background is merely a download image of a street I had found from Google.

I then used the 'Free Transform' tool to adjust the size and perspective of the Stencil [now Layer 1] however, before placing the stencil in its final place, I used the 'Lasso' tool to cut around the window and telephone wires to create Layer 2. I could then place the stencil, Layer 1, on the wall of the building followed by Layer 2 [so that the window was clear of any, what would be, graffiti] resulting in a realistic finish.