Making a Black and White portrait to cut out of wood

[dannyr]

How would I make a black and white picture and make it so that I can make the picture so that I can cut it out of wood? The areas that need to be cut out are called islands.  I have a few friends that are in the military and would like to have a wooden picture of themselves for their families. Thanks for any help.

[Eli]

You may use Red Ochre's Two tone Threshold effect and then apply the Median noise effect to smooth the results.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Eli

[Pixey]

Hi and Welcome to the forum.

 

If I understand you correctly, you want to make the image to look like wood?

 

 

1.  Have a wood texture on a layer of its own

2.  Have your photo/image on a transparent background on its own layer.

3.  Use the Select tool to 'select' the image

4.  Move to the wood layer and hit delete

 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2016 by Pixey
typo & added 1 more image

[MJW]

Two other possibilities are Ed Harvey's Color>Threshold and Rei's Stylize>Ostu Threshold. (I think the control given by Two-Tone Threshold or Threshold is probably preferable to the automatic Ostu Threshold.)

[Red ochre]

Adjustments/Posterize is useful in addition to Eli's suggestions.Then use the magic wand in global mode to select areas of equivalent tone.
Copy/paste these into their own layers and fill with a wood texture (I used clipwarp with no distortion but 'fill from clipboard' should work).

To just make a marquetry pattern, use Effects/Artistic/InkSketch after Posterize.

[dipstick]

You can also use "Ink Sketch", then play with blending modes (left), or use Red Ochre's Object Bevel to create the engraving Right.

 

[AgentGoodspeed]

The way I read the OP's question is that he wants to get a black-and-white printout in order to carve an actual piece of wood.