Photoshop Tutorial: Basic Clone Stamp Tips

Learn the basic Clone Stamp options and how to use them when retouching photos with Alain Perdomo

The Clone Stamp is a very useful tool for photo retouching in Photoshop, but it is important to use it correctly and know all the customization options that the software allows us.

Digital artist Alain Perdomo (@alainperdomo) shares these tips to get the most out of it. You can see the tutorial here:

1. First steps

The best way to take advantage of the Clone Stamp tool is to start with the right settings. To configure the program, click on the tool and consult the options bar that will appear in the menu at the top, just above the workspace. There, choose the Normal mode, making sure Opacity and Flow are at 100%.

Also review the Sample section to determine which layer you will extract the sample for cloning from. To avoid confusion, the most useful option will be All.

Remember that, you change these settings if needs be, but these are the parameters that we will use to start experimenting with the tool.

It's worth noting that the Clone Stamp is, in essence, also a brush. Therefore, we can personalize it as such. With Clone Stamp selected, right click to view all the brush configuration options and choose the best one for your project.

2. Start experimenting with samples

The first thing to do when cloning an image is to determine which point in the image will be the original sample. To choose this sample, press the Alt key while clicking on the part of the canvas you want to start cloning.

Then, move the brush to any part of the image where we want to place our cloned element. The program will offer us a small preview so that we can see exactly which part of the original image we are going to clone.

When you've chosen the point you want to move the cloned image to, click on it to start the process. As we drag the brush with the left button pressed, the point where the sample comes from will move too. This will allow us to clone the rest of the image, and not just the exact point of the original sample.

3. Clone with or without alignment

Now that we know how to use the Clone Stamp, we will look at an option that we will find in the tool's configuration bar: the Aligned option.

If this option is checked, we can stop while we are cloning, interrupt the process, and resume it from where we left off without a problem. That is, even if we leave the cloning process halfway, if we return to it and continue dragging the brush, the result will be an exact copy of the first image.

However, if we have this option unchecked and we stop the cloning process at some point, when we resume it, it will start cloning again from the first point we chose previously with the Alt key.

If our goal is to create an identical image, it will be best to work with the Aligned option checked. However, you can always uncheck it to get more experimental or abstract results.

If you liked this tutorial, you can learn about the basic principles of digital photo editing on Alain Perdomo's online course Introduction to Photography Retouching with Photoshop.

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