31 August 2007

How To Make Stencil Image in Gimp

Few days back i saw my friend was having the famous Che Guevara image as his icon in Gtalk. It made me so curious that I wanted to make some thing similar of my image. The following is the result of that thirst. I took various help from various website for over 4 days to come up with this small how to (This is my first of many to come).

This is the Base image I am going to consider (sorry if its copy righted) Open it in Gimp (yes you need GIMP) u can also use Photoshop (you need to crack or pay money for that, so i will try to put it later)


Click on Image -> Mode -> Grayscale


Choose Tools -> Color Tools -> Brightness-Contrast


This is the most important part. Adjusting the brightness and contrast will be the one determining the end result. The tip is make the edges of the image darker so that you will get a better outline for the image. For this you can keep the Contrast more and brightness less. Also try to pick a photo with white background, this might also help better.


Now click on Tools -> Selection Tools -> By Color Select


Click on the more darker color, tip is to make sure the doted lines that you see are on the edges of the image that you choose. So that you have the entire image structure in tact.


After that its a piece of cake, click on Layer -> New Later . . .


Make sure Background Color option is chosen (and the background color is white preferably)


You might end up with image like this.


Now click on Edit -> Fill with FG Color (best to have black as Foreground color)


To finish it click Select -> None to remove the dotted lines and to get the final image.


Tada... The final Image :-) hip hip hurray


If you think you did not get the desired output, then go back to the Brightness and Contrast stage and change them until you get the desired result. The following picture are example for of how you can generate the same image with different B&C variation.


Cool Is in it. Thank for patiently reading through this crap. Now get your hands dirty you self the whole world is left to conquer. Come back for more interesting tips and designs. Btw, I am just learning ;) so the people with advanced knowledge in Gimp/Photoshop might come up with much more beautiful results.