How to Master the Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop

today I'm going to show you guys how to master the clone stamp tool in Photoshop hey guys and welcome to phlearn my name is Aaron NACE and you can find me on phlearn comm where we make learning Photoshop and photography fun we had a cool episode for you today it's all about the clone stamp tool and you might be saying there's a whole episode of the clone stamp tool that's crazy well the clone stamp tool is really important it's a huge part of Photoshop it's going to make a huge difference when you use Photoshop if you know how to use the clone stamp tool very well so we're dedicating this entire episode showing you guys everything you need to know about using the clone clone stamp tool we're going to show you guys how to use the clone stamp dialog box different ways of sampling your images as well as using custom brushes with the clone stamp tool so the image we're working on today is by ASA and cat of deep end imagery they work with us here at Fleur and we're going to link to them right down below because they're amazing photographers and videographers so this is a really cool image let's just go ahead and talk about some of the things that we're going to be doing to this image with the clone stamp tool so let's just grab a nice color to kind of like highlight some things now the clone stamp tool is really great for getting rid of things that are basically distracting in your image things like this lavalier mic that's just a little bit distract distracting and we can totally get rid of that it's really not that hard to do alright her hand I think is a little bit distracting as well like I would rather this just kind of like end with white I don't need her hand to be there and we have a little area of her dress where you can see kind of some padding and things like that so this area we're going to be able to fix that as well and then a couple other little areas with the photo as well just things like all these little like a couple white spots in her hair and things like that where you can kind of just see through it and then in our grooves head looks like he's got an area here normally I would not fix this actually if I was editing this photo and this these were my clients or something like that but I'm going to show you guys how to do it just because this is a tutorial alright so we're going to take care of those areas first so the first thing I want to show you let's go ahead we're going to click on our background layer and we're going to hit s4 the clone stamp tool now here it's going to give you quite a few options up here on the top your mode generally I want to keep this mode at normal pretty much all the time all right our opacity and flow those two work the exact same way that a regular brush tool does we want to keep all these aligned we want that checked and here where we see the sample there is a couple options we have the current layer current and below and all layers so if I click on current layer and let's just say I create a new layer which I do plan on and I try to hold alt or option to sample a point and then start painting it's not going to do anything because there's nothing on this current layer now that doesn't mean you should go to your background layer and start you know sampling there and painting around like this I don't recommend that I don't recommend ever working on your background layer it's a much better idea to take and to make a new layer now with this new layer just make sure you change your sampling to current and below or all layers now all layers is going to sample everything even the layers that are above this layer so I usually have this set to current and below so that way here on a new layer if I wanted to sample her smile and paint it over here for some odd reason I can do that so we're using a new layer and we can sample current and below now let's go ahead before we actually do the clone stamping I want to show you guys some of the interesting things in the clone stamp dialog now to get to the clone stamp dialog you can click on this button right up here and this will bring your clone source up right here or you can just go to window and then down to clone source so clone source and here we have it now your Photoshop may default by having this Chuck show overlay automatically checked which means that if I sample a point let's say I sample right over here on her eye and I move my cursor around and I'm not holding down anything with this hand I'm going to see a little preview of actually what we're going to be clone stamping now I prefer to not have this visible to me this kind of gets in the way some people like to have this visible you can have it things like have it clipped or unclipped basically it's I don't know why anyone would not click clip because I can't see anything what I'm doing so let's get clipped again you can see what you're doing again you can change your opacity here if it's you know if you would like to be a little bit lower you can even change your blend mode to see like what would this look like if it only darkens things again not as helpful but they do have those options so I generally leave my show overlay unchecked now this means that I don't I'm kind of flying blind here a little bit so if I uncheck this and I sample Hirai or something like that I don't see what it's going to look like but there's actually a quick way you can use a keyboard shortcut to get this show overlay back I was not going to check it it's just going to give you a quick preview so I leave this unchecked and then I hold alt or option as well as shift and that gives me the exact same thing but when I let go with those keyboard shortcut my clone stamp source the show overlay disappears so it's a quick keyboard shortcut that you can use to have that show when you want it and not show when you don't okay so that's pretty cool now the other thing we do have things like you can stretch your width and your height width I I find not really that helpful at all this is like if you want to you know clone stamp her eye and then when you paint it back in you want it to be much bigger of an eye to me that's not really helpful to me I would rather just do this on a new layer and then transform the layer afterwards so we're just going to reset that you can change the angle and things like that again to me that's not that useful now the other thing they do allow you to do is create multiple clone sources so let's say our first clone source is the eye so I sample there and I'll paint an eye over there sure why not we can click over here and I can choose this to be her mouth so I can sample that and now we're painting a mouth over there I'm sorry this is kind of weird what I'm doing but you get the idea now if I choose the first one again it's going to basically sample from the same point so I'm going to continue being able to sample from the same point if I choose this one I'm going to continue being able to sample from the same point there as well and we're making a face let's just delete that layer because it looks gross but you get the idea you can continue to create new sample points and then go back to them so if I create this point and I sample from over there I'm now painting off there and I can continue to switch back and forth personally I don't use these much but they are there for your option I generally just click on the one there we go I generally just click on one and then change my sample point like if I want a sample a new point I'll just hold or option sample a new point and then paint sample a new point and then paint okay so those are some really cool options here in the clone source that I think the most useful is I keep this show overlay unchecked but if I need a back shift and command or sorry shift and alt or option we'll get that back so now it's time to show you guys how to actually use the clone stamp tool we're going to start off I'm going to take care of this area of hair right up here I'm gonna show you a couple cool things that you can do with the clone stamp tool so we're just going to sample here so alt or option to sample right over here and then I'm just going to paint in right over here alright now let's use that a little preview option so sample over here holding alt click there and then I'm going to hold still holding alt I'm going to hold down the shift key and then I'm going to get a little preview of what I'm actually going to be painting in that's just going to really help out being able to actually see what you're doing so you can there we go you can get something that matches pretty well alright let's fill that in a little bit darker and there we go so just a really quick way to clean that up now again I probably would leave this normal or I would leave it as is if these were my clients because that's a part of him and generally it's not a good idea to go around changing that but that's a good way to show you guys you can actually take care of that using the sample so now we're going to take care of the lapel mic it's a little bit different but basically the principles are the same so let's go ahead and create a new layer I'm going to hit s4 the clone stamp tool and then we're going to sample right over here there we go and then I'm going to start painting right down here we're going to take care of this in two separate parts so we can hold down again shift as well as alt and we'll get a little preview and I'm just going to start painting in this area and I know it's not matching exactly but we can always transform it which we'll do in just a second so we're going to paint a little bit more area than we think we need and you can always use things like the layer mask to just take care of that like I can layer mask in the area way okay next we're going to hit command T and we're going to go ahead and rotate this around a little bit and then I'm going to right click and go to warp and warping is just going to allow me to actually like move these pixels around which is really cool so I can click and just kind of drag there hit that check box and we're good to go so you can see I was able to completely replace this part of the of the lapel now the other things that we have to kind of keep in mind up for some of the times you're going to have areas like this where it's like a little bit darker up here and a little bit lighter down here then it needs to do to blend in there's a really cool trick for this we're going to use the brush tool we're going to change the blending mode of the brush itself and I'm going to eat I'm going to use something called transparency lock so with your layer selected what we're going to do is go ahead and lock our transparency and that's right over here now what a transparency lock does this is really kind of cool a transparency lock if I normally just paint on this layer with red or something like that it's going to look like this okay if I hit this transparency lock it's only going to allow me to paint where this layer has already got pixels on it and in this case it's just where I use the clone stamp tool so it's going to lock it to just this layer very very helpful so we're going to keep the transparency lock on I'm going to change use my brush where you just use a soft edge brush here and now we're gonna change our brush mode from normal down to soft light and we're going to paint with black and white this is essentially the same thing as dodging and burning so if I paint white on this layer with a soft light layer it's going to basically just lighten it up a little bit so I can paint light right over here there we go to lighten it up so it matches what we've got there and I'm going to hit X to paint with black right down here and there we go it's going to match that in so I'm painting with soft light areas just right on this layer and that's just allowing it to blend in with what's already existing in the background and you can do this using this transparency lock which is really nice okay let's go ahead and show you guys that again because it's a little bit more advanced so again create a new layer we're going to hit s for the clone stamp tool I'm going to sample this area and then we're going to paint it in right down here alright let's go ahead and zoom in hit command T right click and I'm going to go to warp and we're just going to warp that up so it aligns perfectly with the rest of the jacket all right we're going to race this away and now you can see it's a little bit lighter than it needs to be so you could have there use curves or we'll just use the same technique so I'm going to hit this transparency lock grab our brush tool paint with black because we need it to be darker and change the mode of our brush to soft light so as I paint on there with the soft light you can see it's just going to darken it up and there we go just stop when it looks good if I continue going it'll continue to get darker and darker and darker really really cool technique alright so there we can see basically we completely replace the pail and it looks totally real but you wouldn't even know that it happened ok so that's another use now let's go ahead and look at the next thing we're going to do with their clone stamp tool this is a little bit more of a simple application we're just going to get rid of her hand it's a nice hand but it just kind of takes away from the image just a little bit so again on a new layer we're going to sample current and below I'm going to sample right up here by holding alt or option and just paint right down below here there we go very nice so you can see it just kind of duplicates exactly what was right above it and especially in an area like a nice area that's basically just light like that it does it really really well ok so that's a really simple use of the clone stamp tool now we're going to go in here and we're going to take care of this area so we're going to take grab a new layer again and you can see I'm using new layers over and over and over again it just gives me the maximum amount of flexibility if I want to at the end I can merge all those layers together and it's going to decrease the file size things like that for now I'm okay with having a bunch of layers so this time we're going to hit the clone stamp tool so as for the clone stamp tool I'm going to sample right over here because I want this kind of area it's going from highlight into shadow kind of coming around and I want this to kind of like follow along all the way here this is kind of like you can see the shadow area over here so alt or option to sample over here and then I'm going to go right over here hold down the shift key just to make sure I'm doing it right in about the right place there we go and painting in there all right looking great now if you're painting too much like if it's going to if it's putting down a little bit too much and when you're clone stamping you can change your opacity or your flow as well so you can actually put down a little bit less of the a little bit less of the color or the texture when if you need to by lowering the opacity or the flow okay so that looks pretty good we can see it's starting to blend in pretty well let's go ahead and just sample this to blend that in just a little bit better with the rest of the dress okay and now what we're going to do because it is blended in but we can still see there's a lot of area that we need to kind of take care of there we're going to put a layer mask on this and I'm going to use a layer mask with a small brush just make sure you change your brush mode back to normal if you have used something like soft light with your brush mode it's always going to trip you up just make sure you change it back to normal okay there we go and we can just kind of paint back the nice like little feathered areas and things like that all right there we go so we've taken care of this area as well basically just making a little bit more we're just getting rid of that area from the dress now if you need to we're going to create another layer I'm going to grab my clone stamp tool and we're going to bring our flow down because I'm going to add a little bit of shadow there so we're going to sample over there and I'm just going to paint in a little bit of a shadow there we go just to help it be a little bit more realistic all right cool that looks good so another use with the clone stamp tool and you can see that just clears that area up quite a bit as well so let's just look at the before the after with those there we go really nice alright now we're going to zoom in here and I'm going to show you guys right over here the hair this is again a really simple area just hold alt or alt option to sample this and painted it now if you ever need to right-click you can actually choose to use different brushes you can change your size you can change your hardness you can change how wide your brushes so for instance if I wanted a clone stamp an area that was just you know like more of an oval you can do this as well so you're not limited to your certain like here I can rotate this around there clone stamp here and basically just duplicate the hair shape so you're not limited to just a soft round or a hard round brush you can actually choose any brush you can even use a custom brush like if I wanted a clone stamp you know something like this crazy-looking brush right there there we go I can cool and stamp this and then paint it in like this as well so any brush you want to use you can use with the clone stamp tool alright looking good so we took care of a lot in a relatively short period of time let's go ahead and hold down shift click on all those layers and hit command G and we're going to show you before and the after so this is the before and this is the after just a couple quick little changes on this image but they getting rid of those distractions really make a big difference in the final image guys thanks so much for watching phlearn it's cool you're able to hang out with me and learn things about the clone stamp tool give us a big like on this video if you did like this video it's a thumbs up on YouTube it really helps us out and be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel where you can receive updates share this with your friends and leave us a comment down below if there's something you guys would like to learn on Photoshop thanks again for watching and i'll phlearn you later it's just not true for comm seven days a week our website is open seven days a week be sure to check out our pro tutorials we keep our store open seven days a week cuz it's online peace alright there's enough bloopers for this one

Channel: PHLEARN

Views: 791,293

Keywords: Photoshop, Photography, Education, Phlearn, Aaron Nace, How to use the clone stamp tool in photoshop, Clone Stamp, Clone Stamp Tool, Photoshop Tools, cover, wedding photo, clean up, dress, suit, microphone, erase, extra

Id: BChwzIslDJg

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 03 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/mckitty07]

Wow, I knew how to use the clone-stamp tool before, but using his warp plus dodge and burn technique makes WAY better results. I'm really surprised how much I learned with just a clone stamp video.

[u/PixelatedPope]

Pretty awesome. I certainly don't utilize the warp transform nearly enough.

One critique is I think he overdid it a bit when hiding the pad thing on the neckline. He knocked out the shadow that helped define the top of her breast from the top of her chest. Not that important since the point of the video was to show us how to use the clone tool, but I like to point out mistakes to make myself feel superior.

[u/250lespaul]

Great video! Very helpful and I learned a lot of things I had no idea existed. And I've been using that tool for 5 years.

[u/tijmendal]

Really, really good tutorial, but that's gotta be the worst name I've ever heard.

[u/That-one-guy12]

I really like this guys take on Photoshop, http://youtu.be/Vo2HjVy82sc

[u/Thingswithcookies]

Very useful. Thanks!

[u/[deleted]]

Awesome... Photoshop is amazing

[u/[deleted]]

Aaron from Phlearn is amazing! He's a ninja in photoshop.

[u/[deleted]]

Now I feel compelled to watch Cool Guy Has Chill Day.