An Introduction to Photoshop’s Clone Stamp Tool

The Main Uses of the Clone Stamp Tool

• Removing minor flaws: You can use the Clone Stamp tool to make small repairs to images, such as removing dust, spots, or other similar imperfections.
• Removing entire elements: You can also use the Clone Stamp tool to erase even very intricate components of an image. For instance, if you’re working with a photo of a beautiful landscape marred by an unwanted element, such as street sign or a bunch of tourists, you can use the Clone Stamp tool to remove those elements seamlessly, without redrawing any part of the scene by hand.

Advantages of the Clone Stamp Tool

• Precision: With the Clone Stamp tool, you can target exactly which pixels to use to replace a flaw in another part of the image—you can specify even a single pixel to use. With the Spot Healing Brush tool and the Patch tool, you have to rely on Photoshop to interpret the type of fix you’re trying to make and then execute it. The Clone Stamp tool’s capacity for very precise sampling makes it possible to replace even the most complex unwanted elements with a convincing, realistic substitute.
• Multiple sample sources: The Clone Stamp Tool is the only retouching tool that lets you define and draw upon up to five different sample sources. For instance, if you’re working on retouching a portrait of a face and you’d like to fix flaws in the eyes, forehead, and lips, you can store samples from each of those areas and then call them up on the fly rather than have to resample again and again from each area. Note that this feature is new to Photoshop CS3 and is not available in previous versions.

How the Clone Stamp Tool Works

1. With the Clone Stamp tool active, you specify the size and shape of the brush that you want to use to select your “cloned” pixels.
2. You press and hold the Alt key on a PC (Option key on a Mac) and then click the part of the image that contains the pixels you’d like to clone. The area on which you click is called the clone source.
3. Once you release the Alt key (or Option key), Photoshop stores your clone in your computer’s memory. If you’re using Photoshop CS3, you can open up the Clone Source palette to store up to five different clone sources.
4. If you’re using the Clone Stamp tool without the Clone Source palette, you simply click to paste the cloned pixels wherever you want to use them. Each time you click, Photoshop will paste in a new copy of the same cloned pixels. If you’re using multiple clone sources at once, you’ll first need to select which source to use in the Clone Source palette and then click wherever you’d like to paste it within the image.

How to Access Photoshop’s Clone Stamp Tool

The Clone Stamp tool is located near the middle of Photoshop’s Tools palette in the same button that houses the Pattern Stamp tool (which is a specialized variation on the standard Clone Stamp tool). The Clone Stamp tool’s icon is a stamp that contains a tiny black down arrow. Be careful not to confuse it with the Pattern Stamp tool’s icon , which contains the same exact stamp but has a tiny checkered pattern in the upper left corner. If you don’t see the Clone Stamp icon in the Tools palette, you can find it as follows:

 

 

 

1. Click the Pattern Stamp tool’s icon and move your cursor to the right.
    
   
2. A submenu will appear to the right in which you can select the Clone Stamp tool. (You can also press Shift+S repeatedly to toggle between the Pattern Stamp tool and the Clone Stamp tool.)

The Clone Stamp Toolbar

Once you select the Clone Stamp tool, the Clone Stamp toolbar will appear just under the main Photoshop toolbar at the top of your screen. The Clone Stamp toolbar is wide— the images below show the toolbar split in two, but the actual toolbar appears as one long, horizontal bar onscreen.