: Clone Stamp Only Exercises for Class I teach a very basic Intro to Graphic Design course using the Adobe Suite. In the section on photo retouching we talk about the clone stamp, healing brush,

@Sue6373160

It's good to look at the major differences between these two tools. I've also made an edit here to include the fact that the healing tool can basically behave the same as the clone stamp if it is set to replace in the tool options.

Healing tool = takes texture of sample and pulls colours from destination.

Clone stamp/Healing tool with replace mode selected = direct clone

While the healing tool is great for blemishes on skin or removing dust, etc... As soon as you want to remove something next to an edge, it falls on its face. When you sample from or to areas with high contrast or edges, the healing tool smudges like crazy. You can sample another area where the edge is the same but you don't always have this luxury. This is when I find it's time to switch over to the clone tool and then just heal the clone tool's edges after. Alternatively, you can carefully create a selection box that excludes the edge and then use the healing brush which will stop it from pulling the edge in.

If you want to be really tricky then get them to figure out how to remove something from a textured object without removing the texture. Or get them to remove text from a fabric where it's creased or folded...

Anyway... Here's one I did earlier:



Never mind all your beautiful models!

This required a mixture of healing and cloning as well as copying chunks of pipe to paste over the really bad parts and using various brightness, paint and cloning tools to blend them in.

One key thing you need to teach them is how to make all the touching up look natural. Nothing ruins touch-up work like making it blindingly obvious that it's been done!

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@Shelley591

I would argue that knowing the particularities of software isn't all that important in a graphic design class. The focus should be on design thinking.

So, that said, I'd let the students use whatever tools they find necessary to complete the tasks. If the software has a new and improved feature, why not let them use it?

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@Deb5748823

The Clone Stamp Tool is obsolete.

The Clone Stamp Tool is obsolete, Adobe only keeps the tool alive because the Clone Stamp Tool has always been part of Photoshop and Healing Brush is still in development. Why is it obsolete? The Healing Brush has two modes, Normal and Replace; the Replace mode replaces the functionality of the Clone Stamp Tool. Not to mention that Adobe has added many new tools like Spot Healing Brush, Patch Tool and Red Eye Tool that make the use of the Clone Stamp Tool unnecessary.

In a nutshell: Healing Brush = Clone Tool 2.0.

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