Woodcut Print Effect
Hand it a photograph and it comes back as a woodcut — no grey anywhere, every middle tone made out of parallel cuts spaced wide or close, because a block can only print ink or nothing. Two fields.
We made two examples, from two different photographs: a cat at a window and a boat on shingle: one picture whose subject is a silhouette, and one that is all texture. The direction of the cuts has a different job to do in each.
There is no grey: every middle tone is parallel lines set closer or wider, and the cuts follow the form, so edges read without an outline. Do not expect large bare white areas even if you ask for them. The window and the sky both came back hatched, so treat the first field as what is darkest and what is lightest. Fine detail such as whiskers disappears, so avoid photos whose point is something thin.
Generated for this library
Input
Black/white the cat solid black; the window and the sky
behind it bare white
Cuts run curving around the cat's body, and radiating
outward through the leaves behind the glass
Photograph cat.png (1254 x 1254)
Returned 1 image · 1:1 · a block print of the cat
values two - 7.9% of the pixels sit in the middle
of the range, and that is the antialiasing
on the line edges
tone spacing, not grey - the fur, the leaves and
the sill are all parallel cuts at different
pitches
direction as asked - curving round the cat, radiating
through the leaves, with the grain on the sill
detail the whiskers are gone, the eye is one black
almond with a single white cut
bare white the window was named bare and came back
hatched; nothing large was left uncut
words none, in any scriptYou fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1What is solid black, and what is bare white
- 2Which way the cuts run
Woodcut Print Effect
What this makes
Hand it a photograph and it comes back as a woodcut — no grey anywhere, every middle tone made out of parallel cuts spaced wide or close, because a block can only print ink or nothing. Two fields.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Attach the photograph and paste the template in the same message.
- Replace the two FIELDS lines. Name real areas of the picture, not adjectives — 'the cat solid black' rather than 'strong contrast'.
- Look for grey. If any part of the result is a middle grey rather than spaced lines, the run has painted a woodcut instead of cutting one, and the first field was probably too vague about the extremes.
- Check the cut direction in the biggest mid-tone area. Lines that ignore the form are the usual tell that it fell back on a texture.
What you swap
- What is solid black, and what is bare white
- the cat solid black; the window and the sky behind it bare white
- Which way the cuts run
- curving around the cat's body, and radiating outward through the leaves behind the glass
Before it runs
- A photograph, attached to the message, with something in it that reads as a shape. A picture whose subject is separated from its background only by colour has nothing for a knife to find.
- A decision about the two extremes. The first field is the whole composition: what goes fully black and what goes fully white is what the print is, and everything else is cut to get between them.
- Tolerance for losing detail. A woodcut cannot hold anything narrower than the blade, so small things become shapes or disappear. That is the medium, not a failure of the run.
- No text. Cutting type backwards into a block is its own trade and this does not do it.
When to reach for it
When something needs to look printed rather than photographed: a poster, a cover, a label, a masthead, a T-shirt. Templates in this genre ask for a woodcut look and hand back a photograph with the contrast pushed and some scratches over it — grey everywhere, which is the one thing a woodblock cannot do.
What changes
- One photograph in, one relief print out — two values, ink and paper, and nothing between them.
- Middle tones are built from parallel cuts whose spacing carries the value, not from grey.
- The cuts follow the form rather than crosshatching at random, which is what separates a woodcut from an engraving.
- Detail below the width of the knife is dropped into a shape instead of being drawn small.
- One image, no type, no border, no fake print texture laid over the top.
Pairs with
- Halftone Print EffectHand it a photograph and it comes back as a printed halftone — one ink, one screen angle, tone carried entirely by how big the dots are, with the coarseness set against something in the picture. Two fields.
- Backlit Silhouette EffectHand it a photograph and it comes back as a cut silhouette lit from behind — no interior anywhere, so every part that has to be recognised must reach the edge and show itself against the light. Two fields.
- Chalkboard Drawing EffectHand it a photograph and it comes back drawn in chalk on a black board — where the darkest thing in the picture is bare board, because chalk adds light and there is no way to draw a dark line. Two fields.