20 years behind the machine
Your photo stays on your device. No upload, no account, no tracking.
A browser tool that finds the edges in your photo and turns them into a true-to-size template. Three promises: you can change every line, the prep takes minutes instead of half an hour at the lightbox, and it invents no line. Hard edges land, soft transitions not always. What sits beside the edge or is missing, you draw in with your finger. Built by a tattoo artist.
The complete tool, in your browser, on your device. No upload, no sign-up. Print and export carry a watermark until you have the full version. What it costs
A head start, not a finished stencil. The tool finds the edges from the jump in brightness in your photo. Hard edges land: eyes, lips, hairline, the contour against a light background. On soft transitions, at the neck or a shoulder in shadow, the line sometimes runs beside the edge or follows the shadow instead of the form. What it doesn't find, it doesn't invent. Corners of the mouth, nostrils, an eyelid — there you almost always need a few strokes by hand.
That's exactly why everything is editable. Eraser, pen that snaps to the edge, drag, freeze — with your finger on the phone, with the pen on the iPad. The prep that otherwise costs half an hour at the lightbox is done in minutes, and the lines come from the photo, not from your hand. If you draw stencils by hand, you get a shortcut in many genres. If you work with full-auto tools, you get control over every line back.
That's why lines instead of shadows, and as little stencil ink on the skin as needed. The tool fills nothing and hatches nothing; even the deepest black gets only an outline. A stencil that lays areas onto the skin brings a lot of thermal ink into the spot you're about to work, smears at the first wipe, and until then hides what you're working on. You get reference points, not a grey mass — and skin with only the lines you need. With ornaments, patterns and lettering you notice it first: the stencil stays clean, no area that runs at the first wipe, just the contour you trace along.
And you don't have to take my word for it: the demo is the whole tool with your own photo. Only the printout carries a watermark.
Six steps, all in the browser, all undoable.
No colour printer in the studio, just a thermal printer and a phone? This is how we did it.
The reference lay on the table as a black-and-white printout. Photo with the phone, loaded into the tool, size entered, amount chosen. “Save as image”, saved the image to Photos, opened it in the thermal printer's app and printed. From photo to stencil, a few minutes.
What it took: line weight in the tool at 0.90 mm, the printer on “strong”, the battery full. With a thinner line or half a battery the sheet came out too weak. That was a cheap printer, one try. Yours may behave differently, so there's no “always works” here. Once the run with more printers is done, a list of settings goes here.
Reference on the left, the tool's run on the right. Nothing retraced.
Plumage — structure that quickly turns to a tangle.
Soft gradients without a clear edge, plus a hard black.
Edges, facets and inner structure in tight space.
Folds and tendons, a metal reflection as an anchor.
← swipe
solid = edgedashed = border of a tonal area
The same rule the tool draws by — and the one this page is set by.
Pay once
59 €
Launch price for the first weeks. After that 79 €.
Better said upfront than after 14 days.
Everything the full version can: load, amount, eraser, pen, circle, freeze, fullscreen, print preview. Only the printout and the saved image carry a watermark across the sheet — you can judge the result but not transfer it. Your photo doesn't leave your device in the demo either.
Not to work. The tool is a single file that computes in your browser. Once loaded, it runs in airplane mode, in the basement, and at the convention with full Wi-Fi chaos.
No. No account, no login, no credits. You buy the file and use it.
No. The image doesn't leave your device, because there's nowhere for it to go. Nothing is uploaded, stored or deleted — simply nothing happens outside your browser.
Never. There's no content check, because there's no server that could check. What you put in gets computed. What you tattoo with it is your business and your responsibility.
No, and that's the point. There's no model in it that adds something that isn't in the photo. The same run twice gives the same result twice — to the line. What's missing you draw in yourself with the pen, deliberately.
Because then you have the shadows as solid areas on the skin. That lays on a lot of wax, smears at the first wipe, and hides exactly the spot you're working on. A stencil has to last for hours and still stay see-through for your own work — that's why lines.
For the same reason the tool fills nothing. Tonal areas get an outline, black areas get outlined, the fill you do at the machine — as little thermal ink on the skin as needed. What some automation lays on the paper as shading or full hatching ends up entirely in the skin on transfer. Here only the line ends up there.
Any you already have. You either print straight from the tool at true size or export a 1-bit PNG at 300 dpi that the common printer apps take directly.
A measured note: lines under about 0.4 mm survive on no thermal printer, whatever software makes them. That's why the tool works in millimetres instead of pixels — it knows what actually arrives.
As big as you set it — tested from 70 to 400 mm. If it doesn't fit one sheet, it's tiled, on A4, A3 or Letter, with 10 mm overlap and registration crosses to line up. The check bar on the printout has to measure exactly 5 cm, then the scale is right.
The print size also decides how much detail makes sense at all. Smaller means fewer lines. That's on purpose.
Yes. The tool recognises line art by itself and switches: one line per drawn line instead of two edges, black areas get outlined. You can set that by hand too.
Yes. Eraser and pen take the Apple Pencil, the heel of your hand next to it is ignored. Fingers stay for zoom, pan and the gestures: two-finger tap is undo, three fingers redo. Tested are iPhone, iPad and computer; Android is still untested.
Only if you allow it on first start. Then when printing it remembers which lines you kept, erased or froze, and over time the edges you draw come first. Only measurements are transmitted — no photo, no form, no coordinates. Under “Advanced” you can change it anytime. The demo sends nothing.
No, and it doesn't claim to. It's not a full-auto with a hundred percent hit rate. It takes the prep off your hands: the hard edges land, the soft ones you check, and what's missing or beside the mark you add in a minute or two. The decision what belongs on the sheet stays with you.
Your version keeps running. There's nothing that could be switched off. If you want further updates, you renew — but you don't have to.
Twenty years at the machine. Conventions, trophies, client portraits, and plenty of stencils that came together at the lightbox at night.
Thermostencil grew out of the frustration over those hours — and out of the refusal to use a program for it that makes up its own lines.
No account, no upload. Take a photo on your phone and see what the tool makes of it.
Open the demoWant to know when the full version is out? One email is enough — no newsletter, no tracking.