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Photoshop includes some rather advanced tools that preform automatic blending for
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image cleanup. And in many cases, those tools are invaluable.
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But sometimes, you don't want that blending behavior because it can cause
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other problems within the image. For example, I'll zoom in on a portion of
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the grass here, and then you can see there's an area that's a little bit bare.
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And not just because there was no grass growing there, but rather because there
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was some damage to this photo. And I'd like to clean that up.
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But I want to ensure that the cleanup is going to blend in well.
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And sometimes what you'll find with the tools that blend automatically is that
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that blending causes problems. Well, let's take a look at how we can
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perform image cleanup without the blending.
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And that calls for the Clone Stamp tool. I'll go ahead first and create a new
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layer for all of my image cleanup work. I'll click on the Create New Layer
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button, the blank sheet of paper icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, and then
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I'll double-click on the name for the layer and type a new name.
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In this case, I'll just call it Cleanup. And then I'll press enter or return on
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the keyboard. Next, I'll choose the Clone Stamp tool
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from the toolbox, and then I can take a look at the Options bar.
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I'll make sure that I'm using just a normal brush and I want to set that
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hardness to about 50%. This will give me a little bit of a
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transition along the outer edge of where I paint in the image.
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I won't have too hard a line and I won't have too much blending, which can cause
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some odd ghosting patterns within the photo.
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I'll then make sure the blend mode is set to normal and the opacity is at 100%.
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I generally leave the Aligned checkbox turned on, although frankly, it's not
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that critical because we're going to choose a new source every time we paint
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with the Clone Stamp tool. I'll make sure that the sample option is
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set to all layers. And then I'll turn on the button to the
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right of that, which will disable the effect of adjustment layers when I'm
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working with the Clone Stamp tool. I can then move my mouse out over the
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image and adjust the brush size. I'll use the Left Square Bracket key to
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reduce the brush size or the Right Square Bracket key to increase the brush size.
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Using a brush size that's no larger than the object I'm trying to remove and
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sometimes a little bit smaller, I can then choose a source of pixels.
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So I need to specify which pixels I'd like to use to cover up this portion of
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the image and I think I'll just choose some grass from over in this area.
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I'll hold the Alt key on Windows or the Option key on Macintosh, and then click
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on that source area, and then simply click and paint over the area that I want
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to clean up. And you can see, because I'm blending the
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edges, everything blends in nicely, but because I'm not using one of the
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automated tools that performs advanced blending, I don't get any odd smoothness
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or areas where the texture has been altered.
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I get nice grass where I want it. And I can repeat this process in other
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areas of the photo. Each time I paint, I will choose a new
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set of pixels. I don't just want to sample one area and
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keep using it over and over and over because it might not match very well for
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all areas that I want to clean up. And we can also run into a situation,
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where there is some obvious duplication. I'll go ahead and turn off the cleanup
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layer by clicking the eye icon to the left of the thumbnail for that cleanup
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layer on the layer's panel. And you can see the before version
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without any cleanup applied. And then I'll turn that layer back on and
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you can see we have a nice seamless cleanup without any problematic blending.
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So while the automated tools, the spot healing brush tool for example, can be
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incredibly helpful for a variety of image cleanup tasks, sometimes you just don't
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want that blending. And so the clone stamp tool can really
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save the day.