The Clone Stamp tool copies information from one area of your image and applies it somewhere else. Before applying the Clone Stamp tool, there is one thing you should know: All retouching tools use the Brush Presets palette, shown in the image below. The brush that you use with the Healing Brush isn’t all that important because it will end up blending your retouching into the surrounding image, but the brush you choose is critical when using the Clone Stamp tool because it doesn’t have those blending capabilities. So you have to decide if you want what you’re about to apply to fade into the image or to have a distinct edge. For most applications it helps to have a soft edge on your brush so you can’t see the exact edge of where you’ve stopped.

The brush that you choose determines how much your retouching work will blend into the underlying image.

I find that the default soft-edged brushes are often too soft, which can cause the area you retouch to look blurry compared with the rest of the image. To prevent that from happening, hold Shift and press the right bracket key (]) while you keep an eye on the brush preview in the options bar. Each time you press that key combination you’ll be changing your brush’s hardness setting in increments of 25%. The default brushes have a hardness of either 100% (for hard-edged brushes) or 0% (for soft ones). I find that 25% and 50% are better for retouching with soft-edged brushes.

Cloning Around
After you’ve chosen your brush, you’ll need to tell Photoshop exactly where you’d like to copy from. Do this by holding down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) and clicking the mouse button. Then move to a different part of the image and click and drag the mouse (with no key held). When you do, you’ll notice two cursors (Figure 16.39). The first one is in the shape of a crosshair; it shows you the source of Photoshop’s cloning. When you apply the Clone Stamp tool, there will be a second cursor—a circle showing you exactly where it’s being applied. When you move your mouse around you’ll notice both of the cursors moving in the same direction. As you drag, Photoshop is constantly copying from the crosshair and pasting into the circle.

Option- or Alt-click to define the spot you’d like to start cloning from.

The Clone Stamp tool copies from under the crosshair and pastes into the circle.