Retouching Tools. Cloning Stamp To Duplicate Things

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1 Retouching Tools Cloning Stamp To Duplicate Things The cloning stamp does pretty much what the name suggests. It clones things. What it essentially does is sample your image from one area and copy it to another. This has 2 main uses. Firstly, to duplicate things. The sample below shows how to duplicate the dog but it can also be used to add copies of any subjects into a scene. The other use is to get rid of parts of an image such as unwanted people or maybe a piece of rubbish on the floor. You do this by cloning the surrounding area over the subject you want removed. Open the image and select the clone stamp Take note of the available options at the top. Firstly you will want to use a soft brush. Change its hardness to between 0-20%. Click on the drop down menu called Sample. This allows you to choose how the cloning stamp will work. Current layer means it will only clone from the layer selected. Current & Below is the selected layer plus the layer below that and All layers is fairly self explanatory. Personally I tend to use Current & Below. I then create a layer above what I want to clone and do all my work on that. This way I can just delete any mistakes without ruining the starting image. 1

2 Move your mouse over the area you want cloned. Hold down the Alt key. Your cursor will change to look like a target. Where ever you click with this is where the clone stamp will start to sample from. So click on the dogs head then release the alt key. Choose where you want the clone to be and work out where its head should be. Then hold down the left mouse button and start painting the clone onto the page. The position you targeted will move in unison with your strokes from the first time you click so don t worry if you let go of the mouse button by accident. When you finish you should end up with a copy of what you targeted. So to simplify. When you hold down alt and click you are choosing where you want to copy from. When you don t have the alt key held down you are choose where to copy too. As you can see from the image above my clone is on the new layer. I had sample set to current & below and had the new layer selected. Cloning Stamp To Remove Things In this image I want to get rid of the blanket and objects on it. First use the clone tool to clone grass over it. This will remove it from the image. Next use the healing brush to clone different areas of grass from the image onto the area you previously cloned. This will give the image a more natural look and hide obvious clone markings. 2

3 This technique can be used for many things, including touching up portraits. It can be used to get rid of skin blemishes or stray hairs. Try it out on some of your own photo s and see what you can do. 3

4 Spot Healing For this tutorial, I'll be using the Spot Healing Brush to quickly remove some distracting pimples from the girl's face in the photo below, but the technique is the same no matter what it is you're trying to remove or repair as long as the area is small enough for the Spot Healing Brush to be effective. A teenage girl with typical teenage skin problems. Let's get started! Step 1: Add a New Blank Layer Add a new layer by clicking on the New Layer icon. Step 2: Rename the New Layer Spot Healing 4

5 Step 3: Select the Spot Healing Brush Select the Spot Healing Brush from the Tools palette. You'll find it grouped in with the other healing tools. If one of the other tools is showing in place of the Spot Healing Brush, click on the tool and hold your mouse button down for a second or two until a small fly-out menu appears, then select the Spot Healing Brush from the menu: The Spot Healing Brush is grouped in with the other healing tools. Step 4: Select the "Sample All Layers" Option By default, the Spot Healing Brush works only with the layer that's currently selected in the Layers palette, which will cause us some problems if we try to use it right now since we have a blank layer selected, which means that all we'd be able to do is replace nothing with different nothing. We need to tell Photoshop to look at the image on the Background layer as well. To do that, select the Sample All Layers option in the Options Bar along the top of the screen: Make sure "Sample All Layers" is selected in the Options Bar. Step 5: Click on the Problem Spots to Heal Them With the Spot Healing Brush and the Sample All Layers option selected, all we need to do now is click on problem areas in the image to fix them! I'll zoom in on an area of the girl's face so I can see the problem spots more clearly, then I'll move my brush cursor over one of the pimples and adjust my brush size with the left or right bracket key so it's just slightly larger than the pimple itself: Use the keyboard shortcut to make the brush cursor a bit larger than the problem spot. I'll click on the pimple with the Spot Healing Brush, and just like that, it's gone, replaced with good texture from somewhere in the surrounding area: One click is all it took to remove the pimple. 5

6 Pimples? What pimples? For problem areas that don't fit easily into the round shape of the brush cursor, like small scratches or oddly-shaped skin blemishes, simply click and drag over them, again keeping the brush as small as possible. Here, we see a longer, narrow row of pimples just below the corner of the girl's mouth: Not all problem areas can fit inside the round brush cursor. To heal this area, I'll click and drag a short stroke over it, starting just below the pimples and moving upward. As you drag, it will look as if you're painting over the area with black. The color is only temporary so you can see the area you've covered: Dragging with the Spot Healing Brush looks like we're painting with black. When you release your mouse button, the black color disappears and the area is healed: For best results, use short brush strokes when you need to click and drag across an area. The direction you drag in can make a big difference in the results because Photoshop favors the area you started dragging from when it looks for replacement texture. If you can't seem to get the Spot Healing Brush to work no matter how many times you drag over the problem, try dragging from a different direction, and whenever 6

7 possible, begin dragging from the cleanest area with the largest amount of useable image data. The Brush Modes If you're using the Spot Healing Brush to remove acne or other skin problems as I am here, you'll often get even better results by changing the Brush Mode in the Options Bar from Normal (the default setting) to Lighten: Try the Lighten brush mode when fixing skin problems. With the brush mode set to Lighten, Photoshop will only replace pixels that are darker than the good texture data. Since pimples and other skin blemishes are usually darker than normal skin tone, only the pimple or blemish itself gets replaced, leaving more of the original image surrounding it intact. If a blemish happens to be lighter than the normal skin tone, use the Darken mode. You can quickly switch between all of the brush modes for the Spot Healing Brush from your keyboard by holding down the Shift key and pressing the + or - keys. Proximity Match and Create Texture Directly to the right of the brush mode in the Options Bar are two additional options, Proximity Match and Create Texture. Proximity Match is the default setting and with it selected, Photoshop looks for good image data surrounding the problem area you've clicked on and randomly selects texture from the good area to replace the bad texture with. Sometimes though, there simply isn't enough good image data to use and no matter how many times you try, the Spot Healing Brush fails miserably. When you find yourself in this situation, try selecting the Create Texture option. Photoshop will examine the surrounding area and create its own texture based on what it thinks the good texture should look like. When there isn't enough good image data for Proximity Match to work, try the Create Texture option. I'll continue clicking around the image to remove the remaining pimples. Here's how it looks after quickly retouching it with the Spot Healing Brush: Was I able to fix every problem with the Spot Healing Brush? No. It's hard to see in the screenshot, but there's a couple of larger scars on her forehead and chin that would be a better match for the regular Healing Brush. However, with nothing more than a couple of minutes of my time and a few clicks of the mouse, Photoshop's Spot Healing Brush was able to do a fantastic job of removing the girl's acne and leaving smooth, healthy looking skin in its place. 7

8 Healing Brush Photoshop tutorial The healing brush sits somewhere between the clone stamp and the spot healing tool. You select a point from which you wish to clone from but the tool also tries to match the lighting and color depth of the area which you clone on to. What this means is that it isn t particularly suitable for normal cloning but it is fantastic for cleaning up an area which has already had the clone stamp used on it. For example cloning out an unwanted subject may leave a slightly false look, the healing brush can help fix that. It s also great for cleaning up smaller areas such as creases and damage in a scanned image. Open the image and select the healing brush Then try and use it like you would the clone tool. 8

9 Hold alt to select where to clone from and then release alt to start cloning. In this instance, sample an area of grass near the coot in the picture to try and remove the coot from the image by cloning over it. As you do it you will notice that the ground looks slightly discolored. This is because the healing brush is trying to match the surrounding colors of the coot itself as the spot healing tool would. You will notice that the final result looks OK but the healing brush has left a slightly dark area where the coot once was. This gives away that the image has been altered. Go back to before you started using the healing brush and try it again but using the clone tool instead. 9

10 The result this time should be more satisfying as there is no discoloration. If you look you will notice that there are obvious cloned elements. Well now its time for the healing brush to shine. Selecting different points from the images grass use the healing brush to give the area a more natural look. The healing brush will be matching the colors surrounding the area so you don t have to worry about cloning from areas of grass that might be slightly darker or lighter. The final result should be a bit more satisfying. So that s all 3 tools and how they work. The key is to know when and how to use each tool most effectively. The spot healing is fantastic for cleaning small blotches or color spots off your images. The cloning tool is for direct cloning and hiding unwanted elements. The healing brush I tend to just use in conjunction with the cloning tool when I m using it to remove subjects from an image. The clone tool gets rid of the subject and the healing tool will heal the area that I cloned by blending it in better. 10

11 Patch tool This tool is what you would want to use if your image has torn clothes, or stains, or holes in walls, or blemishes etc. This is very similar to the Healing Brush tool except with the patch tool you can define a selection where you want the effects applied. The Healing Brush Tool acted like a brush where as the Patch tool acts like one of the Lasso Tools. Once again the best way to learn how to use this tool is by using it! So go ahead and launch photoshop. You will find the patch tool hiding under the Healing Brush tool. Just click on the healing brush tool icon and hold your mouse button down until you see a new menu pop up. It will look like this: Click on the Patch tool. Now we are ready to patch some stuff Here we see Little Timmy. It seems like Little timmy got into a little accident. All his clothes are torn and his grandmother is coming over to see his latest pictures! We must do something noooww!! Ok stupid scenario but you get the idea. Choose the Patch Tool and then choose the Source button in the Patch Tool Option bar on top. Next click and drag around the place where the clothes are torn. Now we have told photoshop what area needs to be repaired. Next just click inside your Patch Selection and drag it over to where ever the shirt is not ripped. This is where we get the sample from. It seems like little timmys waist area was unharmed. Therefore, drag it there. You will notice that your original selection area changes to show whatever you are dragging on. Then once you get to the undamaged area release your mouse button. 11

12 As you can now see the torn area that we selected has now gone away. With a little more work you can fix the whole shirt. I only used the patch tool to fix the whole thing. In an actual photograph that I would need to fix I would have used all the tools available to me including the paint brush and clone tools. Since this was a patch tool guide I only used one tool. Much better results can be attained if you use all the appropriate tools. Thats the cool thing about photoshop you have tons of useful tools at your disposal and you must mix and match them to optimum results. If you choose destination instead of source in the Patch Tool Option bar you will be able to first choose the area you want to sample from and then drag to the area that you want to repair. It is personal preference and I think choosing Source makes more sense. 12

13 Here is another example. This time to remove wrinkles around this persons eye: Step 1: Using the patch tool make a selection around some of his wrinkles Step2: Click and drag the selection you made in step 1 to a place where there are no wrinkles Step3: Let go of the mouse and you ll see the wrinkles that you selected in step one have disappeared. Step4: Repeat till all the wrinkles you wanted removed go away 13