Putting On A New Face With The Clone Tool

Long Island Photoshop member Jeff Barlowe was kind enough to provide us with a very nice tutorial in which he used the Clone Tool to salvage an image. Jeff's lovely daughter Sara and her cat Cinnamon were his subjects. Here's how it was done.

1) Jeff took two different photographs, both of which showed that either his daugther's eyes or the eyes of her cat were closed. He need to combine the best portions of both images to obtain a usable photograph. To begin, he opened both images in Photoshop.

2) The background layer of image 1 (the image on the left in step #1) was duplicated by dragging it onto the "Create a new layer" icon located at the bottom of the Layers palette. All the new work that follows was performed on the duplicate layer. This was done to protect the original image from any damage or change.

3) Jeff next activated image 2 (the image on the right in step #1 above). Using the Clone Stamp tool (also known as the Rubber Stamp tool), and choosing a medium sized soft brush tip, he sampled the image by Alt-Clicking the middle of the cat's nose.

4) Re-activating image 1, Jeff carefully cloned over the middle of the cat's face and then cloned other portions of the photo that he felt were needed. When completed, he flattened the image and saved the file.