Mastering the Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop: Adding to Your Image

In this video, we'll be using the Clone Stamp Tool to begin adding to our image where the transparency is. Therefore, with our Telluride panorama Photoshop file open, let's begin working.

The first thing that we'll want to do is make a copy of our panorama so we can protect the original. The easiest way to do this is to grab the entire Panorama group, drag it into New Layer, and we'll see that we have a Panorama Copy. Let's then lock our original panorama, retitle it Panorama Original, and hit ENTER.

Next, to use the Clone Stamp Tool on this panorama made up of multiple images, what we want to do is merge all the images into one layer. The easiest way to do that is to right-click on Panorama Copy and click Merge Group. We can now see that we only have one layer that has been merged from all of these photos.

While this is helpful because we can simply work with one layer, keep in mind that this is a destructive change; therefore, we won't be able to go back and release all of those photos into different layers. That's why we want to have our Panorama Original folder with all of them. Next, let's toggle the visibility for our Panorama Original so that we can begin working.

The first thing that we'll want to do for our image is crop it down. We don't need to fill in the entire area around this image; therefore, we can crop it down a little bit and save ourselves some of the fill work. We'll go to our Crop Tool found in the Tools bar, simply click and drag in, crop to about there, and hit ENTER.

Let's use CTRL+S on the keyboard to save our work thus far and zoom in to the bottom right so we can begin working. I'll use CTRL on my keyboard and scroll down to move to the right. Next, let's select the Clone Stamp Tool.

The Clone Stamp Tool is similar to the Healing Brush Tool in that we can select where the pixels are coming from. However, it allows us to stamp and fill in part of our image by pulling specifically from other parts of the image. Therefore, let's zoom in a little bit closer and begin working on these trees down here. If we click, we'll see a dialog box come up telling us that ALT hasn't been selected and, thus, we haven't selected where the pixels are coming from.

We'll click OK and next hold ALT on the keyboard until we see the target as our cursor. If we're going to fill in right down here, let's pick from some of the trees and greenery right above it. Using ALT to click, we'll now see that our cursor shows a preview of what we're going to see when we click. I'll simply click and drag around, and we'll see that we begin filling in some of these transparent layers. The Clone Stamp Tool can be pretty effective when we're using it to add texture such as this, where the actual pixels aren't very important.

Let's use ALT again to select over here and begin adding in pixels. You'll see that if we select something other than the texture we want to add such as this rock up here, and begin trying to draw, it'll simply copy the pixels from above and give us a very different image. Thus, it's important to try and match what you're filling with ALT.

I'll use CTRL+Z on the keyboard. Now, for this section here, we're going to try and pull pixels from right above where it turns from the lighter green into some of the other vegetation. I'll hold ALT and click and just start to make lines. As you can see, there's a target right where it's pulling the pixels from—currently to the top left of my cursor—and this helps us see where we're pulling these pixels from.

I'm going to keep dragging here and keep switching up where I'm pulling pixels from, and you can see we fill that in pretty naturally. Next, let's work on this corner here. If we hold ALT and select where we're pulling pixels from, we can simply start dragging over.

You will notice, however, if you keep dragging to the bottom, we see that we don't have any pixels being dragged. That's because it's actually pulling from what was previously there. So, because that's where we started drawing up here, it won't pull the pixels we've recently drawn while the mouse has been clicked.

All you have to do is release the mouse, click ALT to again select where you want to pull pixels from, and drag over. Using the Clone Tool effectively often means that you have to drag from multiple sources so that it's not too obvious that you're recreating the same pixels from another part of the image. One thing you will notice when using the Clone Tool is that, sometimes, your image will look repetitive if you drag too much from the same place.

Therefore, this brown section right here looks exactly like this brown section here. The easiest way to fix that is to again hit ALT and cover that up with a different texture. That way, this looks completely different.

We'll do the same thing over here using ALT and removing that lighter green, and finally right here using ALT to remove that tree. This will simply keep working along the border, pulling in from multiple sources to give it a unique look. Let's hit CTRL+S on our keyboard to save the work so far, and in the next video, we'll be finishing up this photo with the Clone Stamp Tool.

See you there!