Super Easy Stencil

Hi everyone! In this tutorial I will be showing you how to easily create a stencil in Photoshop.

Here is what we will be making:

What you will need:
•A photo which you can find here.

Let's get started, shall we?

Step One: Setting up your document
For this step I just simply copied the picture in the link, went into Photoshop, navigated to File > New and it filled in the image resolution for me. Then just push Ctrl + C to copy the image onto the document.

Now usually when you do this, if you photo is not black and white like this one. Then you will need to Desaturate it by going to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Step Two: Learn to use Threshold
Navigate to Image > Adjustments > Threshold and set it to 115. Click OK and you should end up with something like this:

Step Three: Blur it a bit
You'll notice that some of the edges are a little rough, so we are going to blur them until they are nice and smooth.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 5px.

Step Four: Use Posterize
Navigate to Image > Adjustments > Posterize and set the levels to 2.

There you go. A very quick and simple stencil.

Now if you are going to actually use this as a spraypaint stencil, then you will need to erase some of the black so that the white is not surrounded by a black area. In other words, all white areas need to connect to the background.