The Cloning Tool

      So what is a cloning tool and how can it help me to make money with my photographs?  The cloning tool, or cloning stamp for Photoshop users is probably the most important tool in the photo editing arsenal of weapons.  Simply put cloning is copying a portion of a photo and then overlaying it to some other location on that photo.  Everyone, even the most talented of photographers will occasionally take a photo that has an unwanted element in it, for example your son holds up the rabbit ears behind the head of someone you would rather not make mad, or vacation photos that contain a significant other that isn’t so significant anymore.  Whatever the reason with a little time and knowledge of how the clone tool works you can remove the most unwanted offenders without anyone being the wiser.  Of course we are proposing ludicrous examples in order to prove the value of the clone tool, but in the real world of photo correction it really is absolutely essential to success.
     In this Gopro photo that I took on the Potomac River just above Hancock, Maryland you will notice that the bow of my kayak and the tip of my fishing rod are showing at the bottom of the image.  Now that might be fine if the image was going into a fishing or kayak ad, but maybe not so fine for say an article on the effects of increased recreational travel on secluded rivers.
     To use the cloning tool I merely select (usually a right mouse click) the portion of the river that I want of copy and apply it over the area of the image that I want to hide.  In Corel Photopaint or Paintshop Pro you hold down the left mouse button and move it over the area to be hidden.  You will now notice that the area that you right clicked mirrors the movement of the area you have left clicked. In the example photo below you can see that the bottom circle with the crosshair denotes the area which is to be copied, while the empty circle at the top defines the area where the copied image will be placed.  In the Corel products as long as you hold down on the left mouse button it will keep copying and transferring the image, in Photoshop it is handled a little differently, more or less in the same way you would use a rubber stamp.

     Whether you use Corel, Photoshop, or any other editing or paint program you will always be given a menu in which you can choose the size, shape, pressure or density, edge blur, opacity, and in some cases thickness.  These menu choices are tremendously important, because you will not always want to transfer the area to be copied at a 1:1 rate as this will usually show up as an obviously altered area on the photo, kind of like cutting out a piece of the image with a pair of scissors and pasting it somewhere else, it would stick out like the proverbial “sore thumb.”
     With a little practice you will become proficient in the use of this tool.  And as I said previously it ca
n come in very hand when dealing with retouching images, especially portrait images.