Clone Stamping?

Chosen just mentioned this in another thread and it made me gag since I can not for the life of me make clone stamping work for me. I understand the premise of it but the actual application grrrrrr. I think the problem is I have no idea how to control this tool even after reading a tutorial or 3. If I try to pick a small area to clone, invariably I wind up with half the garment! And why when I clone, can I not then apply that clone anywhere on my template? It only goes on some undefined areas. So any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm often told how helpful this tool is. Thanks in advance!!!

Hehe, Jana, if you can manage to control your gag reflex, I'll see if I can shed some light on this for you. I'll try to take it one step at a time. You may know some of this already, but just to be thorough, I'll assume no prior knowledge.


1. What it does
Remember in the Buggs Bunny cartoons when Buggs would paint a picture simply by wiping a brush across a canvas and the picture magically would be created all in one stroke? Well, that's kind of what the Clone Stamp does. It takes a sample of an existing image then "paints" that sample somewhere else. You can use it to paint one part of an image over another part in the same image, or into another image. Think of it as kind of a fast way of copying and pasting with a lot of flexibility.

2. How to use it
The tool has two primary functions, which are sampling and painting. To sample an image, hold down Alt. You'll see the cursor change from an open circle to a circle with crosshairs in it. With Alt held down, wherever you click on your image will become the center point of the sample. Once you've collected your sample, you can apply it anywhere you wish simply by letting go of Alt and clicking the mouse to piant, just like you would with any other brush. When you're painting, you'll see the circle and the crosshairs seperate. The circle is your paint brush, and the crosshair is the area currently being copied.

Try this. Open an image, any image you like. Select the clone stamp and alt click an area somewhere in the left hand portion of the canvas towards the top. Now move the mouse a little ways to the right. Click and drag the mouse towards the bottom of the canvas. You'll see the circle and the crosshair remain a fixed distance from eachother, as both move from top to bottom. You'll also see that the circle is re-creating whatever the crosshair comes in contact with. Voila, you're clone stamping. Move the mouse in a circular motion, and you'll see the crosshairs and the brush moving in unison in a circle, their distance from eachother fixed, and the brush keeps on re-creating whatever the crosshairs touch.

That's about all there is to it, but there are some variations in Clone Stamp behavior, depending on the tool settings, which I'll cover next.

3. Settings
When using the Clone Stamp, from left to right across the top of the screen you'll see pull-down menus for Presets, Brush, Mode, Opacity, and Flow, as well as toggles for Air Brush Capabilities, Aligned, and Use All Layers.

Presets by default will be empty for this tool so I won't spend any time talking about them.

Brush settings apply to the Clone Stamp just as they would the Paint Brush. The size, shape, and hardness of the brush are configurable in exactly the same way. Every single brush head in your library is applicable to the Clone Stamp, just like they are to the Paint Brush. For example, if you select a 9-pixel hard brush, then your Clone Stamp will paint in strokes that are 9 pixels wide and uniformally opaque (hard). If you select a 24-pixel spatter brush, then your Clone Stamp will paint with strokes that are 24 pixels wide and appear in a spattered shape. In other words, for painting purposes, the Clone Stamp is just a paint brush. The only difference is that it paints in multi-colored inks that are patterned to match the sample source rather than painting in one color at a time the way the Paint Brush does. You'll find most of the time that using a semi-soft brush can help blend clone-painted areas blend with surrounding areas pretty effectively. Also, if you have a drawing tablet, you'll find clone stamping is one of the areas where it really shines. The natural variations in brush width and shape that come from using a tablet really help to make clone-painted areas blend seamlessly with their surroundings.

It's important to realize, by the way, that the brush setting controls how the Clone Stamp paints, not what it samples. It's fairly common for those new to the tool to assume that if you want to sample a small area, you should use a small brush. This is not the case. Understand that the Clone Stamp samples the entire canvas every time it samples. The alt-click simply determines the starting point for the crosshairs, and the brush size just determines how wide of an area to paint with each stroke. The image is sampled as a whole every time. So, if you only want to recreate just a small area of an image, use not only a small brush, but also short strokes, and pay attention to what the crosshairs are doing as you paint. As long as the crosshairs remain within the area you want while you're painting, that's the only area you'll clone. Understanding the function of the Aigned setting will help you with this as well.

Mode settings behave just as they do for every other tool. Most of the time you'll use the Normal setting since usually you want to work with exact copies of what you've sampled. Covering what the other settings are for is a more advanced topic, a bit beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Opacity setting is the same as every other tool. If you don't want to be able to see through what you paint, keep it at 100%. If you do, then lower it.

Flow setting is again the same as for the paint brush. It determines how quickly the "paint" is delivered from the brush to the canvas. Lower settings result in fainter strokes. Most of the time you'll just leave it at 100%.

Airbrush toggle turns on or off the airbrush painting effect, just like for the paint brush. With it on, each stroke over the same area intensifies the tonality, similar to the way a real life airbrush applies color. With it off, each stroke is uniform intensity. For the Clone Stamp, you'll usually keep it turned off.

Aligned is one of the toggles that is unique to the Clone Stamp (it's applicable to the healing brush as well, but that's another subject, although very similar). It dictates the way in which the Clone Stamp re-samples and paints over multiple strokes. When it's turned on, the tool will always start to clone from the spot that was alt-clicked. When it's turned off, each new stroke will clone an area that is the same distance and direction from the new stroke that the original sample was from the first stroke. For example, with Aligned turned off, if the original sample (the alt-clicked area) was 100 pixels to the left of the first stoke, then the second stroke will clone an area 100 pixels to the left of wherever it happens to be. Each new stroke will copy whatever happens to be 100 pixels over to the left of itself since 100-pixels-left was the distance and direction set by the first cloning action. Had Aligned been turned on, each new stroke would copy starting from the alt-clicked area, regardless of where the stroke is.

To best understand Aligned/un-Aligned behavior, repeat the exercise in Section 2 a couple of times, once with Aligned turned off and once with it on. Alt-click just once each time, but paint several different strokes each time. Notice how with Aligned turned on the crosshairs begin in the same spot for every stroke, and with it off the crosshairs start at a fixed distance from the brush for every stroke.

Use All Layers is pretty self explanatory. When it's on, the Clone Stamp will samplethe image without regard to what layers. It will still paint on whatever layer is active, of course, but it will sample everything. When Use All Layers is turned off, the Clone Stamp will sample just what's on the active layer. If you alt-click on a blank area of the layer, you could end up sampling nothing, which can be frustrating if you're not paying attention, so keep an eye on this setting.

wow chosen, that must have taken you a while to write up.

I applaud your efforts, both in this thread and in countless countless others.

Said it before and I'll say it again - CHOSEN YOU'RE MY HEROOOO

Thanks for the "Use all layers" tip, Chosen. I've used the clone stamp almost daily for years and years and never noticed it. That will save a lot of Image > Duplicate, Flatten Image work.

not only did Chosen's answer cover everything I might have said, I learned a lot more about clone stamp myself. Wow! Between "Use all layers" and "align", I'm going to save a lot of time. Mega thanks!