Question 1

How do I make a tattoo stencil from a photo?

Accepted Answer

Load the photo or design and Stencil Forge runs the classic divide-blur stencil technique automatically: it divides the image by a blurred copy of itself to keep the lines and drop the flat tones, then maps the result to a clean grayscale stencil. Adjust blur, ink and paper if you want, then save the full-resolution PNG.

Question 2

Is the stencil kept in grayscale or made pure black and white?

Accepted Answer

Grayscale, like a real thermal print. It is never hard-binarized to pure black and white, so fine lines and soft shading survive instead of breaking up.

Question 3

Does my image get uploaded anywhere?

Accepted Answer

No. The entire process runs on your device in the browser at full resolution. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or sent to a server.

Question 4

What does the AUTO enhance do to my image?

Accepted Answer

It diagnoses the image and only fixes what needs fixing — rescuing coloured linework, denoising, flattening uneven lighting, lifting flat contrast, or sharpening. It is do-no-harm: if the enhanced version would not produce a better stencil than the raw image, it is discarded and the raw image is kept. You can toggle RAW to compare instantly.