I am interested in turning a photo to a stencil. When I do a search on RetouchPRO for stencil, I don't get much. The links from Danny aren't working, at least for me. I have Paint Shop Pro 8 and Photoshop elements 2, and no artistic talent. But I love messing with my digital photos.

Why don't you start with the vignette tutorial someone just posted? Should be much of a step from that to a physical stencil.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/rp-tutorials/17114-creating-vignette.html

I am interested in turning a photo to a stencil. When I do a search on RetouchPRO for stencil, I don't get much. The links from Danny aren't working, at least for me. I have Paint Shop Pro 8 and Photoshop elements 2, and no artistic talent. But I love messing with my digital photos.Sorry about the broken links. That happens sometimes when websites change or move.

If you'll send me the URL of the thread (not the broken links themselves), I'll make corrections. (Click my name above and paste the URL into an e-mail).

By "stencil" do you mean a coloring book-like effect, black outlines defining shapes to be colored in eventually?

Try duplicating a channel and using curves, levels, etc. to give you a mask like silhouette. What you will eventually get is a stencil like image that you may want to invert.