Skip to main content

Clone Source Panel Part 1

Lesson 22 from: Adobe Photoshop for Photographers: Beyond the Basics

Ben Willmore

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

22. Clone Source Panel Part 1

Lesson Info

Clone Source Panel Part 1

This location we actually did this image before we stitch to panorama and after we were done stitching the panorama of the left side looked all weird it was like extended and pointing down kind of we use something called adaptive wide angle and after applying it it made the two sides look more even but then some retouching was necessary and I'll show you what that retouching accomplished watch the right side of the photograph I'll hide the layers that contained the retouching and you'll see what this used to look like you see down at that edge on the right side we got some weird stuff going on there where there's somebody kind of merging into the edge that might have been due to the panorama stitching or something else I'm not certain and we have people coming down the stairs afterwards though you can see that we got rid of the stuff on the edge of the photograph a least still have people coming down the stairs I actually don't mind them because it gives the image scale you get a sense...

for how huge is this place? But I really didn't like this junk on the edge. I wanted it to look nice and clean more similar to the opposite side of the photograph, so I want to show you to general approaches when you need to do retouching like that in this particular case there's three layers sitting here I'm actually not sure how I'm gonna accomplish it yet until I delete those three layers and just take a glance at what we have in this particular case we have some green ah kind of grassy area here and it's got a very distinct shape to it as if that shape should continue over there and I'm looking for areas we could copy from I could try to copy from right here and then scale it and move it to make this part but I'm not sure if that would look good or not the alternative I could use to try to figure out how to make that shape would beat it's just steal from the opposite side over here because here we have the exact same kind of configuration and if I were to copy that and then flip it horizontally like a mirror would do it and I'm not sure what would give me the best for now I'm thinking about taking from here the one disadvantage of taking from here and flipping it is if it has any distinct shadows they'll be going in the wrong direction when I flip it like a mirror but I don't think the shadows and here are overly obvious so I think we might be able to get away with it so one method I could use is to make a selection a selection of an area larger than what I really think I need because it's hard to exactly determine what will be needed size wise, then I'm going to copy that area under its own layer. I'll do that by typing command j when I type command j if you watching my layers panel, since I only have that area selected it's not going to copy the entire layer it will on ly copy that area. So now if I hide the layer that's underneath, you'll see we've isolated that part onto its own layer, but its a copy, its still has the original sitting up on the layer below. Then I need to make it reflected so that this is going the opposite direction. I can do that by going to the image menu. I'm sorry. The edit menu, she was transform and then I can say, flip horizontal if I choose flip horizontal, you see how it just flipped it around? If I use the move tooled, reposition it, there's the original underneath and here's my flipped version I can then move it to the other side of the photograph. Now I need to somehow get that tow line up, and I'm not exactly sure what I need yet. Because it's hard for me to see through it to what's underneath there's a couple different ways I could see through to what's underneath, some are more useful than others. The first thing I could do is lower the opacity. If I lower the opacity this, I should be able to see through it to what's underneath. So if I go to the top of my layers panel there's, a choice called opacity if I lower that, I can suddenly see through it if we're going all the way down and see what's under it, bring it up, and I see both, and if I can concentrate on that, I can see this edge right here, and at the same time, I could see the equivalent edge up their consol, click and drag and see if I can get those two edges to somewhat aligned with each other. When I've gotten that relatively lined up, I'll take the opacity setting and turn it back up, and now we need to determine how much of this I'm going to use, so what I'm going to do is use a layer mask, a layer mask is going to hide this layer wherever I paint with black, and wherever I paint with white, it would show it I usually would start off in this case with a layer mask it's full of black by being full of black, it means it's going to hide this layer completely so I'll see the original to begin with and then I could just paint it in where I need it there's a trick when you click on the layer mask icon usually get a layer mass full of white, but if you hold on the option key when you click, you get a layer mask full of black you see my mask is black, black means hide things. So now I grab my paintbrush tool. I make sure it's set to normal settings because who knows what I used it for last? Can I come in here with a soft edge brush and I just start painting and that's revealing the layer that I have? Now I gotta decide exactly where should that stop in the next layer be used instead, I hit the letter x I can paint the other layer back in it's hard to say exactly what we need here, but let's see what that's doing? I'll turn off the layer to see before and after and you can see how I'm getting some of that in there and it's just a matter of figuring out exactly where should it end? So I want to bring back more or do I want to do the opposite? I don't want to get rid of that ok like that. Then I could do other things with the other areas I might hide this layer to see what I started with and then showed again I do see that there's two like a doubled up a little track here and not doing too bad there I want to paint this a little bit more, see if I can clean that up, come out like that might be all right, but you get the idea that sometimes I just copy from one area jump into its own layer, move it somewhere else in paint on a mask, control how much of it shows up sometimes also needed change the brightness of that particular layer because there's a different kind of sun heating it and other times I'm gonna have to transform it mohr where I might end up having to come in and rotate it or do other things in this case if I show it, hide it. I think it's looking good enough for my particular purposes because it's hard to tell exactly what was happening in that area, but sometimes I'd have to put in more so that's one approach to dealing with this, but I want to share with you a different approach we're instead of copying and pasting with layers we can use a brush, bring this paint things in let's say in this particular image what we'd like to do is remove the tree now, if you think about that to remove the tree what's gonna have to be in there instead of tree, hold the building where we going to copy from in order to be able to do that not gonna be the easiest thing to do that's why I chose it? Well, I want to introduce you to a little panel and photoshopped that can make retouching much more powerful than usual before we get into that panel, though, let me joe try this without using that technology yet and see what kind of troubles I'm going to run into. So to get rid of this part of the tree here, I could go to something like the clone stamp tool, and I could come in here and hold down the option key that's ultimate does and click somewhere that will define where I'm going to copy from. So I'm going to copy from here and use that to cover up the tree. Now, usually I would do this on a new layer, so I'll create a brand new layer, and that way I won't screw up the original option. Click right about here, and then I'll move over and I get a preview of what I'm about to apply, and I could move that perv you up and down like this until it lines up. Click and that I can try to paint what's happening is it's copying from where that cross areas and it's putting that information inside the circle and I can attempt to get rid of this problem is right now when I move over to the right the crosshairs too close to that window and so I start to see the edge of the window showing up that's the dark thing that showing up to the right of where my brushes if I continue moving to the right, you'd see it through the window coming in so I might choose, undo and need to it in smaller areas maybe in the smaller brush little bit further away from the window but I'd have to move up and down here see if I get this to a little spot like that, then maybe copy from a slightly different area move over just so I avoid that window open still getting window maybe I copied from this side try to get a tow line up and do this I'd have to do a lot of patchwork to get it that's not the hard part what about up here? What am I going to replace this with? I could try to copy from down here and if I do maybe I start right here my option clicking cause that's where I need a line something up I could try to line it up up with the edge of that vertical line that's there and the edge of that overhang click and then try to put it in like this if I'm good at it I might be able to attempt it but the problem will be what if when I get over here go way over here to the edge of the building you see how much further that's extending out and when I get down here you get down there it's going to start looking like I'm constructing the building in a different way where it's shaped differently let's see if you see the difference that's growing out there and everything not going to be as ideal if I come down here and try to get rid of this area I'm going to run into some issues as well let's see how it could make this a bit easier not necessarily easier just more powerful in what we're doing I'm gonna go to the window menu and I'm going to choose a choice called clone source clone source clone source has to do with any time yousa retouching tool now if you look at the panel got a bunch of different settings in here first the very top we have one, two, three, four five different sources we could use the heck is that let's find out remember before when I started cloning I first copied from this area right here and I option click to use it came over here to apply it clicked and applied it but then after that I went to a different area let's say cloned from over here to apply it here well the problem is the moment I option clicked over in a different place it forgot the first area that I was cloning from and it always thinks about the very last place that I held on the option key and clicked unless I go to the clone source palate and before I tell it to copy from a different area I click right there now I can define a sec ain't clone source so we'll go over here on this time all start this place option click move over click and apply it and let's say by accident I went up here well I thought I was going to screw that up e I screwed it up um I thought it was going to screw things up let's say for some reason I screwed this up later on uh maybe I go and say I want to use a third clone source and I just messed things up in fact I'll mess it up down there I screwed things up we'll check this out instead of having to come back until they wanted to copy from here in pace it there all you need to do is come up here and say go back to the first clone source and it remembers where I originally option clicked so in it remembers how far I moved over so I can come over here and reapply that you see how it remembered that it was copying from that area to the right when I come down to here, I can tell it go to the second area that I option clicked on, so when I come down here it remembers it can line up just right so you can have up to five different clone sources and let's see when that's useful you'll start over here any time I changed the major area that I'm working on within my picture I'm going to use a different clone source, so if I need to come back to any area and refine it, I can easily do so so let's get rid of some of the base of this and we'll use a couple different clone sources first, I'll replace the first clone source by clicking on its icon here and then I'll option click wherever doesn't want to copy from come over here to apply it whenever I run out of useful area to clone from I'm gonna have to clone from somewhere else right there on things lining up anymore it's moved up just the team that so before I option click anywhere else I'll go to the next clone source icon in the clone source panel then I'll come to a different spot let's say appear option click use it hopefully I don't get too close to that window and if right there I don't know if that quite lines up looks like it might have been moved up orbital too thick I'll go to a third clone source before hi option click somewhere and tell it I want a copy from there and by doing so if I need to re touch any of those areas again to touch them up it's not a problem because all we need to do is remember which of these sources I was originally copying from the first, second or third in this case come up here to replace this I'll choose the next clone source before I option click well a little too far over there grab some of the tree again I'll choose undo start a little further over here all right so that means it's going to remember these various areas so if I ever need to go back right now if I just moved down here to one of these areas it might not line up but if I switched between the various clone sources it would remember the original places that I option clicked and be able to use them but what else can we do with a clone source? Well let's say that I came down here and in here if you look at this railing it alternates from a v shaped thing to the shape to another v shaped thing to that shape so this one should be a v shaped one shin that looking at how they alternate so I'm gonna have to copy from one of these others will copy from this one here option click the top of it before I do that I'm going to tell it to use the next clone source option click come over here and I'm not sure if I'm gonna have this just right or not let's see click when I start applying it can you tell I'm too far over see how that thing got thin when I applied it if I go this way watch the shape of a circle compared to where it was before I'm too far over to the right when I applied that well that's okay because here there are settings what this tells me is how many pixels over did I move when I applied that and I can simply take this number click on it and use the down arrow key to say I want that to be through are about five pixels different now when I come back and paint again and if you can tell or not but the circle has moved five pixels to the left so it might more accurately match sometimes I'll end up applying it and I'll notice I'm just one or two pixels off where the heights is office the tiniest bit and I really would rather not have to go back in re option click somewhere to apply that so all I'll do is I'll come over here this means how far if I moved horizontally this means how far if I move vertically if I click on this number and used the oftheir okey to change it I'll make it obvious so it's ten pixels if I come back here and applied again can you tell us ten pixels lower? I needed to go the other direction tissues a negative number so now when I apply I'm ten pixels higher so that means if you find it to be off just a little bit in this case it might be off by one or two pixels I could just dial it in to say I just want to pixels higher and now when I applied it's exactly two pixels higher, that kind of thing but that's not the only thing let's say that I want a copy to replace the top of building where exactly am I supposed to get the piece that would be right here? I can't really just copy from here because of the very top of the building were supposed to have this kind of green tile going across the top really the only area that could copy from would be right here because nowhere else in the building doesn't have that distinct green tiling, so I'm going to come over here in right where I want to connect this where I want to align it is where this comes in and bumps into this vertical line so right there I'm gonna option click then I'm gonna go over to the other side and I'm going to see what would happen if I just click here and apply it well the problem is it would look like that not what I need what I need is a version of it that's flipped horizontally well there's a way to flip things horizontally in here do you see this letter w w stands for with if I click this little icon now it's going to flip it horizontally so let's see what happens now when I come in here and I try to apply it you see that has been flipped so now it is uh flipped but the angle looks wrong doesn't it look like it's tilted well in here there's a setting called angle and I can have it rotated so I might take that and let's see maybe I'm going to rotate I can see it right in my brush can you see in my brush it's actually rotating so what if I get a brush big enough tough to show me most of that area then I click on that rotate field and used up and down arrow keys it's going to preview what angle a beginning and I could say well do I want it this way but I want it this way once I think I have the angle close right about there then I could come in here and applied again I probably just don't need to brush this big and now you can see that angle has changed and it might look more appropriate for this particular spot that makes sounds so let's look at some of the settings I can use because that was pretty cool that it could copy from over here it could flip it horizontally and it could rotate it what the heck else gonna d'oh well it could squish it horizontally make it so it's skinnier than it should be just the with or just the height if I change both numbers which when this lock symbols turned on or this chain symbol when I change one the other would change what that would mean it's scale it make it larger smaller you can say make it ninety percent of its original size we got the rotate which is where I can easily rotate it this icon here would flip it vertically and so by doing all this I can do quite a bit so we can scale we can rotate we can flip and if it's off a little bit in position we confined tune the position just a few pixels at a time by modifying these particular numbers then the next time I move my brush on top of the image and start to paint it's gonna look quite different so if this area happened to be closer to the camera, I would probably need to scale it up in order to make it look appropriate there but in this case I think it's uh nearly the same distance away so if I hide this layer to see before and after how the top of that building now is able to copy from the other side and it's just a matter of working around these other parts which we could do a little bit off you guys got any questions about the clone source panel so far I'm sure you do cj dawson as well as uh e teo said is it true that the settings for apply image is different for eight bit and sixteen bit images when doing frequency separation? Yes, it isthe how the first of all, he mentioned the words frequency separation I don't know why that term is constantly used if you google it, nobody defines it or anything but separating the detail from the color and tone a lot of people returned referred to his frequency separation retouching I hate that terminology because it doesn't really inform anybody is to what's going on, but if you have an eight bit image, which is what I've been working on, you can use the settings that I've mentioned if you use a sixteen bit image instead you'll find that those particular settings don't make it look right and so let's go back to where is our, uh retouching here? Uh grab one of these hopes in it let me just say this was a sixteen bit image if you have a sixteen bid image and you'd go through the same process duplicate later twice I named the middle one color tone and I named the top one detail and then I take the middle one and I blurt it means I'm going through the exact same process we did a moment ago uh say that's good enough although usually had to make sure we got all the details gay then I go up here now at this point when I was working on that top most layer and I came down here in choose apply image the settings that I used were subtract mode uh, first I should tell what layered, uh, to work with color town there we go. Okay was subtract mode two in one twenty eight. If you're in sixteen bit mode, you do need to change the settings, so I'm glad somebody asked just in case somebody working on sixteen images ah, and they're considerably different. What you need to dio is you turn on this check box that's called invert you instead of using subtract mode use add mode and you set the offset to um zero scale needs to be at two so what if I did well when I was in sixteen bit mode the settings I'm using her different uh what I needed to do that was different as I turn on the invert checkbox instead of using subtract modi needed use add mode the scale needs to be a two and the offset at zero these are things that you don't usually store in your head you store in a notebook or you create an action if you know how to create actions this could just be a very simple action where you just click one button in it does all this for you in the end you still set this to the choice called linda your light and then everything from that point on it's the same and so yes and sixteen bit mode the settings are slightly different cool all right, well, I think that we will move onto our next segment that was fantastic, but what we got coming in store for our last class of the day, please? Well, we have two things first more retouching eso we'll talk about other complex reductions we need to do and after we're done with that, we'll talk about little things that make a big difference meaning little settings and photo shop and things that we don't usually have great deal of time to talk about but really should be covered in order to be efficient and just pleasant in photo shop

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Companion Guide
Working Files
Practice Images

Ratings and Reviews

Olga
 

The best investment I've made to improve my PS skills. Mr. Willmore is a skillful lecturer. English is my second language and I appreciate the clarity of his voice and the fact that he repeats several times what he's doing or what he did. It is great for note taking as well as for practicing. Just an Excellent workshop! Thanks Mr. Willmore!

a Creativelive Student
 

I absolutely love Ben Willmore's teaching style. He is clear and thorough. This class has a wealth of good info so I had to purchase this course. Thanks Ben and Creative Live!!! PS, Don't forget to forward the PDF. I am waiting patiently.

a Creativelive Student
 

Outstanding!!! I've been interested and have practised photography since I was Thirteen. Transitioning from film to digital. Ben's course taught me so much I had to purchase it! There was just too much information he passes on. As an instructor, Ben is very clear, concise and thorough. Ben makes sure you understand the concepts; what a great educator! Thanks Creative Live!!!!! Thanks Ben!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES