Have you ever looked at a picture that looked like it would make an awesome tattoo? In this blog post we will cover how to create a tattoo stencil or flash design using any picture with Photoshop. We are using Photoshop Elements to be exact, however, Photoshop has the exact same functions but the menus may be different.
1. Find a Picture to Create a Tattoo Stencil

First you will need a picture to create a tattoo stencil out of. Online pictures will be easiest as you can easily save them to your pc. For magazines or other media, simply scan it.
2. Adjust Hue/Saturation of Stencil Design

>In Photoshop Elements
- Go to Enhance
- Go to Adjust Color
- Go to Adjust hue/saturation
- Move the Saturation bar all the way to the left
This will remove all of the color from the picture. What you are left with is a black and grey of your original.
3. Find Edges of the Outline for Tattoo Flash Design

Go to Filter > Stylize > Find Edges and apply to the tattoo flash design. This find the main outlining lines of the picture.

What you will be left with is the picture with mostly the outer lines which will show up perfectly for tracing onto stencil paper or as an original for a stencil printer.
5. Adjust Brightness and Contrast of Tattoo Stencil

Go to Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Brightness and Contrast and play with the brightness and contrast of the tattoo stencil. Adjust brightness to less and you will get more shading detail but will also increase the chance for unnecessary detail. Adjust for more brightness and you will get crisper outlines but you will sacrifice finer detail.

Contrast should be maximum to the negative side as this will give the most shading detail.
6. Sharpen the Design

Go to Enhance > Auto Sharpen to sharpen the lines of the design. You may want to do this a few times for best effect. Make sure you do not over kill this though as it may create additional focus on unwanted lines.
7. Your Free Tattoo Stencil Design is Ready!

Well okay, its not exactly a free tattoo stencil design, it did take the effort of creating it. However, now you can use any nice picture for your tattoo without having to draw it free hand onto stencil paper. Works great for portraits too!

Turned out quite nice! By the way, if you are wondering who the chick is, it is Veronica Gomez, sweet sexy latina mami..

Thats a nice squat! Seriously though, she is damn hot! Pepsi should rethink their ad campaign and hire her, I would go out and get a Pepsi right away!
Asian girls with tattoos, pretty hot! This one looks feisty! I come across pictures of hot chicks with ink all the time and it got me thinking I should start something for Hildbrandt too. I was thinking creating a hot girls with ink model or webcam contest. We’ll get facebook votes to judge which girl should win. It’ll be like an online beauty pageant except with a lot more contestants and one of the criteria other than how pretty the girl is, is how nice her ink is. What do you guys think? 
Definitely like how this hotty is inked, not so sure about the tattoo itself though as the picture is not very clear. I think that would be an interesting new direction if girls started getting tattoos that doubled up as a kind of lingerie. Nothing like a permanent bra and thong inked on or anything, that would just be weird. I’m talking about subtle things like inked on garters and stuff like that. Then again, I suppose if you have a body like this girl, it wouldn’t matter what kind of ink you got on, it would still be hot! Dunno about the tattoos of gats on her back, I don’t have a close up look but they don’t seem to be done well. Lucky man that inked her though, I bet he must have had a hard time concentrating! Wish I had a frontal view, never know about them butter faces nowadays…
We have 2 cool new sizes for our Stencil Stuff and Green Soap. Both are now available in travel size 4 ounce bottles. Small and compact, convenient to put in your bag and bring it on the go! Also great for people that would like to test them out before committing to a larger bottle. The Stencil Stuff 4 ounce bottle sells for $9.99. The Green Soap 4 oz bottle sells for $2.99. The Green Soap is concentrated and can be diluted to up to 1/4 gallon which makes plenty of soap solution! Please note that our 4 oz size Green Soap is repackaged from original larger Green Soap bottles.
Okay, so maybe we are a little crazy but we just got these awesome Stigma rotary tattoo machines in and we are putting them up for sale already? Yes, we are crazy! We are also a little eager, David tried one of these bad boys out and was like freaking amazed how well they run. Considering their retail price, not a lot of people can afford to shell out 6 hundred dollars to buy one. So, we figured we would help out a little by offering a $20 off discount code for anyone interested in buying a Stigma Rotary tattoo machine from our website.