In this tutorial we are going to change a
color photo, into a black and white stencil and add a little extra. If you want to follow
along with the same image, you can find the download link in the description. When we have opened our image, the first thing we will do, is clicking on the little zoom icon
in the top right, to maximize the image. Then we go to colors, desaturate and leave the
shade of gray, based on lightness. Click okay. Go back to colors and now click brightness
and contrast. Click twice on the line of the lightness to decrease it with 20 points. Then click on the contrast line and make it 70. Click okay. The next step is to remove the
background, including the hands. Select in the toolbox the free select tool. Zoom in by holding the Ctrl key and turning the mouse wheel. We will follow roughly the hairline,
but this need not be very precise. It is important though, to make by the hair as nice round and smooth curves as possible. When we make a mistake we can hit the backspace key, and then the last segment will be removed. When we left click and hold, we can draw curves. When we let go to the mouse we can only make straight lines. When we want to continue after clicking a point, we have to click a new point, because when we click in the last point, the whole selection will move. When we hold the
space bar, the cursor changes into the move tool, and we can, by moving the mouse without
clicking, move the image. This can of course also be done with the scroll bars. When we let go of the space bar again, we can continue with the free select tool. When we are close
to the starting point, we can move the cursor in the starting point until this point colors yellow, and then we click to make the selection final. Go to view, zoom, fit image in window. Go to the foreground-background colors, and click on the little arrows to make the foreground color white. Then go to edit and click stroke selection. Here we change the line width to
26 and click stroke. Go to select and click invert so the background, instead of the face is selected. Now we click edit and then fill with background color, which is black. Go to select and hit none. In the next step we are going to the toolbox, click the scissors select tool, and select the mouth as precise as we can. Zoom in and make the selection. We can make corrections by clicking
on the selection between two points, and move it. Then we can continue where we left off. When we hoover over the first selection point, we can see that the cursor changes. Then we
can click in this point. Hit enter or click in the selection to make it final. Go to select in the menu bar and click save to channel. In this way we save this selection and we
can use it later on in the video. Click layers and activate the image layer again. Change the foreground-background colors back to its default settings, so black is our foreground color again. Go to edit, stroke selection and make the line width 3 pixels. Click stroke. Go to filters, blur and then gaussian blur. Make the blur radius 4 pixels and click okay. We can see that only the selection is blurred. Then we go to colors and click threshold. Here we move this slider to the left and we make it approximately 110. Click okay. Go to select and click none. Move the image with the scroll bar and zoom out a little bit, so the eyes are visible. Click the free hand select tool in the toolbox, and select the eyes but leave
the right eyebrow outside of the selection. Go to filters, and click, re show gaussian
blur. Make the blur radius 5 ... and click okay. Now we go to colors and click threshold again. We make the eyes just a little bit darker, say 130. Click okay. Then we go to
view, zoom and click fit image in window. Select the channel tab, right click on the
selection mask and click add to selection, so the eyes as well as the mouth are selected. Now we click the layers tab and activate the image layer again. Click select in the menu
bar and then invert, so everything except the eyes and the mouth are selected. Go to filters and click re show gaussian blur. We are going to blur the image so we lose a lot
of detail, which makes the stencil look way better when we apply the threshold. Here we make the blur radius 10, and we click okay. Go to select and click none. Back to the menu
bar and to colors. Hit threshold. Because we already applied the threshold on the eyes and the mouth, they are now not effected. Otherwise they would change into a big black spot. We move the slider up to approximately 200, or whatever looks good to you. Hit okay. At this point we have a pretty good looking stencil, but as said before, we are going to add a
little extra. Go to layers and click new layer. We can rename this layer, for instance lips. Make sure that the fill type is transparency, and click okay. Now we click the channels
tab again, right click on the selection mask and click channel to selection, so the lips are selected again. Hit the layers tab and then make the lips layer active. In the toolbox we click on the foreground-background colors, to make the color palette visible. Here we type in the html number: f f 2 8 0 0, which is Ferrari red. Hit enter to see the color.
Then hit okay. Activate the bucket fill tool and click the option fill whole selection. Now click in the selected mouth area. Then we go to select and click none. Go to the layer mode and change it to multiply, so the black of the lips is visible too. To finish of we are going to crop the image, to get rid of the upper part. Go to the toolbox, click
the crop tool. Crop the image. Click in one of the corners or hit enter to apply. And that is it, a powerful black and white
stencil with a little extra. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks very much for watching.
