[Rob Barron]

The Clone Tool / Rubber Stamp Tool

Ok, I know this tool is popular with a lot of people but I have been asked to do a tutorial on it as I am sure there are some who don't know how it is used. Although I am working with Photoshop, most photo-editing programs do this in much the same way.

There are two main reasons for using the clone tool: removing an object that is distracting and moving an object to another part of the picture. We'll look at both in this tutorial.

First, where is the tool? Well, look on the tool pallette and it looks like a rubber stamp. In some prgrams this is actually called the 'Rubber Stamp' tool:

There is another type of rubber stamp tool underneath the cloning tool called 'Pattern Stamp' but we do not want that for our purposes here.

Removing an unwanted object (plus general information):

Ok, so we have a picture open and we want to remove something. However implausible, we are taking a professional footballer, Didi Hamann and we are going to remove his football!

Ok, so with the Clone Tool selected (you can just press Ctrl+S to do this), the cursor looks like a circle with a small cross in the middle. The size of this circle can be adjusted just like any other brush using [ to make it bigger or ] to make it smaller. You can also adjust its hardness to clone with a blurred edge (helps to blend in what you are cloning in or out).

However, before we can start cloning the ball out, we need to set the point we want to clone from. In other words, which part of the picture we are going to use to 'paint' over the top of the object we don't want. To remove this ball, we can use any other area of the grass as it is all much the same colour and brightness. So, to set the origination point, just hold down Alt (the cursor will change to a small circle with extensions that look a bit like a rifle sight) and click on the area to be used.

We need to ensure that we have the correct options checked on the context sensitive toolbar. You will see two options called 'Aligned' and 'Sample all layers'. We want to check them both for now.

What do they both do? Well 'Aligned' means the distance and direction between the origination point and the cloning point will stay the same wherever you clone. So, if your origination point is 1 inch above where you are cloning. If you go to clone somewhere else in the picture, it will set the origination point at whatever is one inch above your new cloning point. This is what we tend to use most of the time. Imagine you have a fly-away hair that you want to remove. What we want to remove that hair is whatever is directly alongside it all the way down. So we set the origination point just next to the hair at the top and then as we clone all the way down, it will use whatever is alongside the hair all the way down to cover the hair.

We will look at what a non-aligned selection can do later in this tutorial.

'Sample all layers' means exactly that: if you have multiple layers open, it will clonse using all the layers so everything you can see in your picture, whatever layer it is on, will be used in the cloning process. If you de-check this box, it will only use whatever is on the layer you have currently selected. I tend to clone onto a new layer so that I can easily adjust any changes I have made so I would always have this option selected, though there are occasions when using only the layer you are on can be very helpful.

Ok, so we have chosen a starting point about an inch above the ball in our picture by Alt+clicking on that point. Now we move our cursor down over the ball and start brushing over it. The grass from our selected point will now be cloned (copied) over the ball, making the ball disappear.

The work in progress....

And the work completed....

Moving an object within our picture:

Now, whilst in that example we have effectively removed the ball from the picture, we might just want to move it to a different part of the grass. That is just as easy. All we do is Alt+Click on the centre of the ball to set that as our origination point and then start painting wherever we want the ball to be....

Now of course we have got two footballs so we just clone out the original and bingo, the ball is where we want it. Voila!...

Cloning more than one example of the same object into different parts of a picture:

You will remember I talked earlier about de-checking the 'Aligned' tool and what this can do. Well, let's just take a quick look at that now....

If we wanted to have a lot of these footballs all over the pitch (I know but this is just an example ) we would want to clone from the same starting point (the ball) to many different places on the field. So, de-check the 'Aligned' box and set your starting point in the middle of the ball. Click wherever you want a new ball and start painting it in. Note, you MUST paint the whole ball in one go, if you lift your brush from the paper it will start a new ball when you start again.

So, let's go crazy and have a lot of footballs....

Cloning from one picture to another:

It's not a complicated tool to use but it is worth playing with as there are plenty of variations on a theme, for example by using diffeent brush sizes, diffeent brush softness and even cloning direct from one picture into another. This is as easy as the above. Just have two pictures open, set your starting point in the picture you wish to clone from and then click in the picture you want to clone the object into and paint away.

I hope thie helps to demystify the Clone tool.

Rob

[cotter]

nice one Rob, very easy to understand...now all I have to do is try it!!!

Thanks for your time

[Sonsey]

Top job Rob, explain's it nicely.

Thanks alot mate!