What do you use to pre-process your stencil images? Anything? If you’re not using anything today, I would recommend using something like PhotoPea. PhotoPea is an image editor that runs in your browser.
Why would I want to process an image before uploading to Bay Stencil?
Usually Bay Stencil gives you some pretty good options right out of the gate. That’s because we do some pre-processing on your uploaded image before we stencilize it. For example, we stretch the dynamic range of the photo so that purely underexposed or overexposed images get corrected.
But sometimes a portrait is backlit, and although it has a lot of bright areas, none of the detail you want to see really comes out in the image. The image below has lots of light in it, but the subject is completely dark. Bay Stencil gives us a couple of good options, but we want to see more of the detail in the face. So we’re going to adjust it so that we can see the detail that we want to see in the stencil.
Getting Started
To use PhotoPea, you just point your browser here. Pick your image from your local files. The image you pick stays on your computer, it never gets uploaded anywhere.
Open the image you want to fix by choosing File -> Open
Choose Image -> Adjustments -> Curves
Drag and pull from the center (45-degree) line to get a curve fit, and pull it above the center-line to brighten until you see the details you want.
Save the corrected image
The reason we use a curved profile to bring out those details is this: if you just increase the brightness of the photo you’re not bringing special attention to the details you want. In order to influence what comes out in the final stencil, you need to change the shape of that curve by going under or over the straight-line contrast.
Results with corrected portrait
The results with the corrected portrait: many more of the options are usable now that we’ve changed the curves of the portrait to bring out the details we want to see.
What else can you do with PhotoPea?
While you’re in there, you can also try out these other functions that are useful for converting your image to a stencil:
- remove background
- threshold (set a pure threshold for a black/white stencil)
- blur the image (to make unwanted details go away)
- eraser tool to remove specific parts of the image
- desaturate / saturate (lose or enhance colors)