Getting to know the Clone Brush


Requirements: Paint Shop Pro 6 / 7

Basic use of PSP

Note for PSP 6 Users:

The directions and screen shots will be
aimed at PSP 7, but this tutorial can
easily be adapted to PSP 6.

The Clone Brush is a very versatile tool. It can be used to paint with or as a photo retouch tool!
This tutorial is geared at getting you familiarized with the basic functions of the Clone Brush...where you go from there is limited only by your imagination!

For this demonstration, I have opened a new image 500 x 500, 16.7 Million colors with a white background and a second image, which will be the source of my "clone".

Note: You can clone within an image, between Raster layers, or between two greyscale or 24-bit color images. This means that you must increase the colors of a gif image (Colors/Increase Color Depth/16 Million Colors 24 bit) and convert Vector layers to Raster if you wish to use these as the source or target.

Let's look at the Tools Palette for the Clone Brush. You have all of the normal brush options available to you: Shape, Size, Hardness, Density, Opacity, Step and even the Custom brush tips are available!

Now we will look at the second tab of the Clone Brush Tool Palette:
The option are Aligned and Non-Aligned. The importance of this will be demonstrated shortly.

JASC's definition of the Non-Aligned mode:

"The source area does not move when you release the mouse. Each time you release and then re-click the mouse, the starting point for cloning returns to source area."

Click on the image to the right to view a full sized picture of the settings.

JASC's definition of the Aligned mode:

"The source area moves with the brush each time you release the mouse. When you release and then re-click the mouse, the brush resumes cloning the image relative to the distance from the source area."

Click on the image to the right to view a full sized picture of the settings.

Okay, let's have a little fun with this now.

Open any image that you would like to use as your source, and another image 500 x 500 with a white background. I will be using this fern picture as my source.

First, I chose my Clone Mode to be Non-Aligned so that I could repeat the same part of the fern over and over again. Then I set the brush Hardness to 50 to soften my "clones".

To Clone, place your mouse over the source and right click once. Then go to your target and left click once. Repeated left clicking will repeat the application of the cloned image. Move your cursor (brush) to various parts of your image and left click once each time. Almost like using a tube, but with more control, etc. Pretty neat!

Click on the image to view a full
sized picture of the settings.

Let's add some textures to our image.

Using the same "fern" sample and my 500 x 500 image, I have added several different textures to my clone brush.

I chose the dither for one instance, grass for another and finally a weave texture.

Note my palette settings in the enlarged picture. Ignore the Styles palette as your foreground and background colors do not matter. In the Textures palette, choose a foreground/stroke texture.

Click on the image to view a full sized picture.

We can also play with some of the other brush settings as well!

For this example, I played with the density, hardness and opacity settings varying them and using them all in the same image.

Click on the image to the right to view the full sized picture.

Cloning is also a handy way to combine images.

Here I used my fern again, and this time I also opened a picture of a rose and cloned it into the middle of the ferns.

Click on the image to the right to view the full sized picture.

Cloning within the same image will also give very nice results.

Here I used a photo of a rose, selected the part I wanted to clone by right clicking on it, then left clicking where I wanted the clone to appear.

A = the source image
B = the target area
C = my brush outline

Earlier I mentioned photo retouching, so I will show you an example.

Here is the original photo of my car sitting in the driveway - I have not done any photo retouches to this image, and it is not a really good photo, but it will do for this example. Note the corner of a trashcan sitting in the right-hand foreground and the very white looking washed out sky.

Click on the image to the right to view the full sized picture.

Now, using a combination of aligned and non-aligned cloning, I have "removed" the dealer plate, eliminated the trashcan and cloned in a sky from another photograph (I deliberately cloned the same cloud so you would see that it was cloned). Then to hide some of my hasty mistakes, I made a selection around the car, inverted it and feathered it then applied a gaussian blur to the background.

With time, practice and patience you can repair and/or replace pieces of images and photos by cloning other sections of the same or different photos.

Click on the image to the right to view the full sized picture.

I hope that this tutorial has provided you with a basic understanding of the Clone Brush and perhaps given you a starting point for coming up with your own images and ideas!