Clone Stamp Tool

This Photoshop for beginners tutorial covers the Clone Stamp tool, which is a useful tool for cleaning dirty marks off an image and making corrections.
It is the most basic of the retouching tools and has been in the Photoshop system for a long time.

• Open image number 02.jpg.
  To see dirty marks and to work on them successfully we first need to increase the size of the image on the screen.
  There are several ways of doing this.
• Go to View in the top menu bar and drop down to Fit on Screen (View > Fit on Screen). The image increases in size as much as possible on your monitor while still showing the whole image area.
• To make the view bigger still, go to View and drop down to Zoom In (View > Zoom In). Image size can be increased in this way by set increments.

  Zoom Out does the reverse. The percentage size of the image can be seen in the bottom left corner of the image's border. Zoom in until the image size reaches 100%. shortcut for 100% zoom is to double click the zoom button.
  
  

  
• With the scroll bars on the right and bottom of the image, it is possible to reposition the image. Move the image around to show the white wall behind the plant on the left. Note the dirty marks on the wall which need to be cleaned up.
• Select the Clone Stamp Tool from the toolbox. It's in the left coloumn - hover the cursor over the icons for their names to pop up.
  Select a brush from the top row in the Brushes palette. When the cursor is over a small dirty mark, it is best if the circle covers it completely.
• Move the cursor to a position on the background as close as possible to the dirty mark and of similar tone and density.
  Hold down the Alt / Option key and click the mouse on that point. This action copies the pixels under the cursor.
  Move the cursor over the dirty mark and click again. The dirty mark is now replaced by the clean area you have just copied.
  Move to another mark and repeat.
• If you want to undo an action, go to Edit and drop down to Undo....
  If you want to redo it, go to Edit and drop down to Redo.....
• How do the retouched marks look? Can you see the join? It could be that the tone of the stamp is not right, in which case repeat the action from a slightly different area.

  It could be that you can see the circle, which means that the edge of the brush is too hard. To remedy this, click on the black brush icon in the options bar to bring up the brush dialogue box. Reduce the hardness by adjusting the slider. Just how much depends on the image texture and tones.

  Practice is necessary here but try 75% in this case. Avoid 100% Softness as the resulting repair will look too fuzzy; this setting should be reserved for out-of-focus areas and even then used with caution.

• In the top options bar, there is a box identified as Opacity. By default this is set at 100%. At times, the Clone Stamp repair can be too obvious. Reducing the opacity for those few occasions can give a better blend. Sometimes an opacity of 30% can be used and build up the repair with several applications.

Special Thanks To Photoshop Tutorial Plus..


Brush Tool
Color Picker.
Layers
Clone Stamp Tool
Marquee Tools
Lasso Tool
Lasso Tool using Quick Mask
Crop Tool