Clone Stamping and Masking

The aim of this is to take away the fear of reorganizing/recomposing a photograph!

Start

I will continue with the result in "Sharpening technique using high-pass filter"

Step 1

Flatten the Image and create a new layer

Step 2

Use the Clone Stamp tool to move your subject in your image


Make sure you're cloning the current & below layer (all layers would do too)

Step 3

As you can see the subject doesn't fit that perfect, that's where masks come into play. You could use an eraser as well, but you're far more flexible with masks.
So let's create a mask

Now make sure you have your mask selected, note that the mask currently is plain white, meaning everything is visible. So let's select the brush tool and choose the color black. Then start drawing along the outline of your subject, you'll see how it will slowly begin to fit in.
If you drew to far you can simply choose the white color ("x") and draw over the spot again to reveal what you just "erased".
If you want to see what your mask looks like hold your alt key and click onto the mask (in your layer panel) this is what you will get:

Step 4

Now let's get rid of the subject that we just cloned.
Use the selection tool and draw a rectangle next to the subject:

goto Layer -> New -> Layer via Copy... (ctrl + j | command + j).
Now move the layer over your subject and flipping it horizontally.
Edit -> Transform -> Flip Horizontal or ctrl + t | command + t and then inverting the width (100% to -100%)

Step 5

Use masks as explained in step 3 to make the borders seamless.
You can also repeat Step 4 on the left of the subject, for the shadow on the ground you can use the cloning method as explained in Step 2.

Result

The windows were exchanged as well, all done with the tools and techniques described above.


I know this might seem familiar to many of you but I hope some of you could benefit from this and will make it to good use!

Have fun, Chris

Thanks a lot Chris. Will surely try this on some of my pictures. :)

Jey, somebody actually read it after all =)
Thanks mate, glad I could help!

That's all just poor PR:). Seriously, though, readers' views to comments ratio for my articles seems to be about 80/1. You have 1 comment for circa 50 views and this is not that bad in my eyes! I think it just takes time :).

To me, this is a nearly perfect article: soft on words, hard on details, very to the point: nothing to add or remove. Hence comes the risk of being warnocked.

I read it too Chris, like all your other articles very much appreciated and useful! Now I'm just waiting for you to expose the magician's trick of making that photo with the huge clock... I still think it's just a gigantic clock!

Thanks Chris, I think using the mask may be just the ticket. I am going to give it a try....

There are those pills over at the grocery store, which make you really big, that's how I could stand behind it ;)
I will soon be having some spare time again... Then I'll try to make such surreal shots again together with a tutorial I guess ;)

Pete, Thanks for the compliment.

Cile, glad I could inspire!

Thanks Chris!
great article..,

Chris, thanks for this article, it may come in handy someday; currently i am not that versatile in PS but you made me feel more confident that i could do it without having a Nasa specialist overseeing my process... :-)

serban

Glad you like it, just go on and have fun =)
that's what photoshop should be... for some reason it isn't all the time though... hmmm...

Thanks that was helpful.

Actually if you are using photoshop CS3 you can now turn on the clone shadow so it makes it easier to get to position right in where you want to clone it to, just a hint.

this is found on the pop out clone tool bar just on the right edge of the right toolbar (history/layers/ect)

Hey... Thanks this was great!

Great technique, I still have a problem with the concept of masks, so this was very helpful.

thanks but I cant see the pics

i just have question, can i find photoshop tutorial video at this forum? thanks for any response.

@manuel, no videos here man. But the Google world is replete with them!!

David Nightingale has some wonderful ones.

http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/