How To Clone Something In Photoshop

Guide to the Clone Tool in Photoshop

past Alec Druggan on Aug 31, 2019

Photoshop CC'due south Clone Stamp Tool is office of the Stamp Tool family. The Clone Stamp Tool allows y'all to take a selected surface area and castor it somewhere else. It certainly sounds unproblematic, but how can you most effectively utilise the Clone Stamp Tool?

When working on an image, in that location are plenty of ways to ready problem pixels. Creating selections with aLasso Tool and using Content Aware Fill, or aPatch Tool. However, theClone Postage Tool has many distinct uses which we are going over in this tutorial. To become you lot using the Clone Stamp Tool, this is what nosotros are covering:

What is the Photoshop Clone Tool?
Best uses for the Photoshop Clone Tool
How to employ the Photoshop Clone Tool
What is the all-time tutorial for using the Photoshop Clone Tool?

This tutorial volition get yous started and add together a powerful tool to your Photoshop CC photography workflow. When y'all edit an epitome, you will be able to edit bug and add creative solutions with ease. With practice, y'all will be a master of using the Photoshop Clone Tool!

What is the Photoshop Clone Tool?

The Photoshop Clone Tool is a tool that allows you to move pixels in Photoshop, copying them exactly from one layer location to another. There are many uses for the Clone Tool, and many of them are applied in professional retouching. There are also many uses exterior of retouching!

How Can the Clone Stamp Tool Aid You lot Retouch an Image in Photoshop?

In that location are many ways in which the Clone Postage Tool volition be constructive in image retouching. Many times the Spot Healing Castor Tool will non exist able to completely retouch an area automatically! The Clone Stamp Tool is a great alternative for this.

The Clone Stamp Tool aims to allow you to have more control. Some tools similar the Spot Healing Brush Tool or Content Aware Fill allow Photoshop CC's powerful engine to algorithmically edit for you. On the other hand, the Clone Stamp Tool gives you lot total control.

For minor problems, you can withal apply the Healing Brush Tool, and information technology should work. The Clone Tool is great for all the situations where it doesn't!

For example, y'all tin choose what brush you use. This ways yous gain access to changing opacity, hardness, and menses of your brush. Y'all can also change the brush type, and utilise custom brushes yous have created yourself!

Furthermore, you lot can use the tool in a selection or on the border of i for a perfect fill. Many times going over Photoshop's own retouching with the Clone Tool will lead to a much more than verbal prototype retouch.

Removing blemishes is covered in this tutorial, and is one of the fundamental things y'all retouch with the Clone Postage Tool.

Creating Furnishings with Photoshop'southward Clone Tool

In that location is quite a list of things to practice with the Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop. Let your imagination run rampant! Cloning tools are an artist'southward dream, so hither are some fun effects for you to try out with this cloning tool:

Retouch an image, every bit mentioned
Repeat text on clothing, or have it motion beyond several different areas
Change the style objects appear in reflections
Add actress optics to people for fantastical projects
Make clothing get from plain to crazy, and vice versa
Correct problematic textures in differently textured images
Indistinguishable elements of an image
Clone different parts of an imagefor graphic design

Altering an prototype with the Clone Stamp Tool leaves you all the power. Like using a manual fashion on your camera, you demand to work harder, just the result you lot accomplish is often better than what the estimator was going to do for y'all. I'm often happy to allow my computer to do the work for me, but if I need a perfect results, I trust myself.

What Does the Clone Stamp Tool Do?

Selecting an area for a cloning tool to sample from locks in where yous want data to come from. Yous select from the same layer as you lot are working from. Now, your castor becomes where the sample area is targeted.

This ways that yourClone Stamp Tool brush will allow you to pigment on what you simply selected as a sample.

There are many different ways to utilise this sample. A great mode to add on to an prototype is blending modes. Blending modes, which are also used for layers, let you to paint on a sample in a variety of means.

Normal blending fashion is the base mode. Normal allows yous to paint on exactly what the sample is. Other blending modes volition make alterations to the image.

Here are all the blending modes available with the Clone Stamp Tool:

These apply in the same way they do to layers. Fundamentally, the Clone Postage Tool samples pixels from a certain surface area of an paradigm, can apply an effect, then will paste them where you want them. There are many nuances to this tool, which volition be covered later in the tutorial.

Best Uses for the Photoshop Clone Tool

Equally mentioned higher up, at that place are many uses for the Photoshop Clone Stamp Tool. In that location are 2 main areas of use for the tool. Those areas are retouching and creative approaches.

What Are the Best Uses for the Photoshop Clone Tool?

Epitome retouching including retouching skin, cleaning busy backgrounds, and all sorts of editing are neat ways to utilize the Clone Stamp Tool. Blemish removal, as covered in this tutorial, tin be a ho-hum process without it.

Removing people and trash from a background is another excellent use of a tool. When trying to cut through someone who is in front of a busier or multi-faceted background, leveraging the Clone Stamp Tool is a must. This tutorial shows y'all how to become through an entire person with just this tool.

Pixel perfect retouching takes a lot of patience, and existence able to sample areas that are already perfect makes editing an image a lot faster. For instance, if y'all are trying stock photography, it is important for your images to have a greater appeal. Uncomplicated images with equally footling detailing are oft smashing stock images.

Tattoos are a perfect example of something you often don't want in a stock image. This guide teaches you lot how to work around tattoos incredibly quickly with minimal work. It wouldn't be possible without this fantastic tool at your disposal.

Sometimes a clean groundwork gets a larger blotch itself, or uneven lighting has caused bug. Using a Lasso Tool or something similar to make full an area can oft leave undesirable pixels. However, if you know what area you want sampled, you can hands gear up it.

Starting time, create that aforementioned selection you were going to with yourLasso Tool. Now, instead of using an boilerplate or a fill, sample from exactly what you need. Pigment on your new sample, and even out the nigh problematic areas easily.

Using the Clone Tool for Graphic Pattern

While this tutorial focuses on image retouching, graphic design is an area that tin can also be worked upon with the Clone Tool. Cloning tools allow you to make more abstract pieces of design, and conceptually modify design pieces. Choosing to implement cloning tools allows yous to open a vast array of pattern choices.

Want to easily change how a translucent or less opaque background interacts with the remainder of your design? Or maybe you no longer have a vector or layered file to work from, but desperately need to fix some portion of an image?

If you are having either of these problems, y'all tin can often gear up them past knowing where you need to sample from. In one case you have a sample selected, you have full control of your design flow and can quickly make edits that yous could no longer make to a completed file.

Not Image Duplication-Oriented Aspects of the Tool

Although the name suggests that the Clone Tool has a single employ, there are many ways in which you lot tin can use the tool. What if you lot need to copy a single slope in some graphic design piece of work?

Brand a selection of that gradient, and then use the clone tool to sample it. While you are using the aforementioned gradient, you tin can so manipulate the level to which that gradient transcends colors by shifting the new created shape.

Some other significant benefit to the Clone Tool is that you can use multiple blending modes in the same layer. This lets you pigment on unlike effects from the same sample. This can especially be useful if you desire to give an image an overall effect, but want the upshot to translate differently to different places.

Want to screen an effect on to a portrait, but non take it ruin a key aspect such as the eyes? Modify blending modes over the optics, or just avoid them!

How to Utilize the Photoshop Clone Tool

Finally, information technology is time to learn how to utilize the Photoshop Clone Tool. Work along with me, and practice using the Clone Stamp!

Primal Features

Firstly, access the Clone Postage stamp. To access the Clone Stamp, use the keyboard shortcut Due south, or select it from the toolbar. If you lot have thePattern Postage stamp Tool selected, correct-click it and alter to the Clone Stamp Tool.

At present, expect at the Options bar. If the option bar is not visible, engage it by selecting Window >> Options. This is what yous should be seeing:

These options permit y'all to do the post-obit:

The Home button returns to Photoshop home.

The Clone Tool icon accesses Clone Tool presets.

Change your Brush settings.

Admission dissimilar brushes via the Castor binder.

Manage multiple Clone Postage stamp sample sources with the Postage folder.

The Mode driblet-down menu lets you select a blending mode.

The Opacity slider lets you lot change your brush opacity.

Change the flow of your brush.

The Airbrush icon enables y'all to brush as you would with an airbrush to create buildups and layer your stamp tool.

Select the Aligned box to change whether the tool volition sample in alignment. As soon as you paint with the tool, the alignment of the sample'due south new target area will stay the same.

The Sample drop-downward Layer Menu allows you to choose what layers you lot desire to sample from.

The Aligning cut off push changes whether the clone brush pays attention to the adjustment layers placed on the sample.

Pressure for size variably controls pressure with size. Turn this off if y'all desire to control pressure manually in your brush settings.

This sounds like a lot, just you can steer articulate of the bulk of these settings for now. After using each one once or twice, you'll understand and remember them.

At present, the most important keyboard shortcuts. As mentioned, utilize the keyboard shortcut Due south toselect the Clone Tool. Hold the Alt or Option key and left-click toselect a sample. That is information technology! Time to edit.

How to Clone Parts of an Image

To clone parts of an image, first switch to the Clone Postage Tool. To do this, use the keyboard shortcut S.

Now, make sure your options bar is set correctly. To simply clone an image, make sure that the Mode driblet-downwardly carte is ready to Normal. Set theOpacity slider to 100%, and the Sample dropdown to Electric current Layer.

This is the image I want to clone a office of:

Let's say I desire to but clone stamp into some text, and utilise the image equally the font colour of the text. I'm going to create a new layer start. Then utilise keyboard shortcut T to select the Horizontal Type Tool. Using the keyboard shortcut W I switch to my quick select tool, and select my text.

Now, using my Clone Stamp Tool, turning off align, and turning on Current Layer and Below, I can paint on the eyes into each word.

Knowing that yous can use the same alignment multiple times allows for a fast workflow. Using regular selections can exist quite slow and computer intensive compared to this process. This 30 second task let me create this image:

This quick tutorial will teach yous the ins and outs of the Horizontal Type Tool I simply used for this upshot.

The Best Tutorial for Using the Photoshop Clone Tool

As covered earlier, there are ii main ways to use the Clone Stamp Tool. These are prototype retouching and artistic uses. Learning from a tutorial lets you copy someone that knows what they are doing, and this lets you lot do without feeling lost. Being able to practice a tool yields confidence, and with plenty patience confidence becomes mastery.

But the best tutorial for using the Photoshop Clone Tool is very subjective. What are you trying to reach? Finding a tutorial that volition allow y'all to achieve your desired upshot is crucial.

The About Effective Tutorials

Hither are some constructive tutorials to cloning that you lot may find relatively useful. As mentioned twice above, this tutorial can assist you learn how to remove blemishes. Another tutorial you may detect useful teaches yous how to use Frequency Separation for picture perfect skin.

Another previously mentioned tutorial can exist applied to annihilation intrusive in an image with a relatively complicated groundwork. This is particularly useful for when typical Photoshop methods fail.

Lastly, this older tutorial past Digital Photography School teaches you a couple nuances of the Clone Stamp Tool. The main method to learning however, is practice, and then take some old and new photos and clone them to pieces.

Download Photoshop equally function of Adobe's Creative Cloud Program to experiment with the Clone Tool for only $9.99/month.

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