1st, open your image in photoshop.
Then, if its not a very high contrast image, mess with the levels (top menu/image/adjustments/levels). If you bring the sliders on either end in a little, it will give you a little better contrast without fucking up your image.
2nd, make your background into a layer by double-clicking on the background in the layers palette. a menu will come up, just click ok.
3rd, duplicate this layer for each layer you want your stencil to be. For this, i will do 5 layers. Right-click on the layer in the layers palette, and choose duplicate layer. a menu will pop up, just click ok.
4th, make a new layer (top menu/layers/new/layer) and drag this layer to the bottom in your layers palette. the order of the layers on this palette from top to bottom is exactly how you will see your design the new layer you just made will be your background. we will color it later. Choose your marquee selection tool, since you will be deselecting and selecting often, and its easiest with this tool.
5th, choose your top layer....this will be your darkest layer, and the last layer you will spray black.
Go to your top menu/image/adjustments/threshold
a menu will come up with a slider bar and a histogram looking chart.
slide the slider to the left, and notice how it gives you a preview. for this layer i used 36.
now, go to the top menu/select/color range and make sure your fuzziness slider is set to 200. now click somewhere on the white part of your design, and click ok. it will select all the white. hit your delete button.
the next layer can be seen now underneath. all that is left of your top layer now is the black. click on the design somewhere to deselect.
now, select your next layer down and repeat from the 5th step.
i am going to post how it will look for all of these. on threshold, you gotta play with it a little bit, but make sure you go farther to the right on the slider with each layer. the first one was at 36, so the next one i used 70....but i think you can manage the rest.
ok. now we have all of our layers. You see how your background is that checkerboard pattern? That is because it is transparent. Make sure nothing is selected, and choose your bottom layer, the "background" layer. pick white for a color, select the paint bucket tool on your toolbar, and click on your design to fill your background with white.
now, i want you to select the next layer up, which is pretty much gonna be the silhouette of the camera. now, go to your top menu/image/adjustments/hue&saturation. now click on colorize so that the little box is checked. you can now slide the hue and saturation bars to change the color, but we wont worry about that right now. Take the lightness slider, and move it to the right, as this will be the lightest layer.
repeat the hue/saturation for the remaining layers, in order from bottom to top.
You don't need to do anything with your top layer, because it is already black.
now, print out each layer seperately or save each layer seperately as a tif or a jpg and take it to kinkos.
Now cut that shit.
by Blink
Reproduced with Permission.
