STAMPING OUT DEFECTS

The next step in restoring this old photograph would be to use the Rubber Stamp tool to get rid of that big stain blotch to the left of her cheek. Don't worry about the banding across her face and the background now. Photoshop 5 has a new tool for dealing with this — the History brush, discussed in the next part of this tutorial.

The Rubber Stamp tool works by sampling (essentially, replicating or cloning) a portion of an image. You can then apply (or stamp) this sample over other parts of an image. It can be used to clone an entire image or individual element in an image, but is most often used to repair dust, scratches, tears, and other image defects. In this tutorial, for example, we will sample a portion of the background near the stain, and then stamp it onto the portion of the image that contains the stain to make the stain disappear.

Click on the Rubber Stamp tool in the toolbox to select it:

Double-click on the Rubber Stamp tool in the toolbox to bring up the Rubber Stamp Options palette:

Make sure it is set to Normal, Opacity is 100%, and the Aligned box is NOT checked (like in the graphic above).

With the Rubber Stamp tool selected in the toolbox, hold down the Option key (Alt key for Windows), and click near the area that you want to clone that has similarly colored pixels (in this case, right below the stain). If your brush is too big or small, pick another brush in the Brush palette, and Option-click again. (Note, it is better to use the Brush Size Painting Cursor for stamping. Under the File menu, scroll down to Preferences, and in the pop-up menu, select DIsplay & Cursors. Under Painting Cursors, make sure Brush Size is selected.)

Whenever you Option-click on a portion of an image with the Rubber Stamp tool selected, you create a clone of that portion of an image. You paint with that cloned portion by simply clicking on the part of the image you want to correct. For the image in this tutorial, for example, I Option-clicked to clone a portion of the image beneath the stain, and starting at the bottom of the stain, clicked directly on the stain until it was gone:

First option-click to create the cloned sample;
Then, click on the image to paint with the cloned sample.

In the Rubber Stamp Options palette, you have a choice of Aligned and nonaligned cloning. For this tutorial, the Aligned box is not checked, but you may want to experiment with Aligned cloning (i.e. check the Aligned box) as well. When the Aligned box is not checked, Photoshop applies a cloned sample from the exact same position every time you click until you Option-click again to create a new cloned sample.

With Aligned cloning (i.e. check the Aligned box), Photoshop clones continuously, not from the exact same position every time, but rather from a fixed position relative to the position of your cursor. Aligned cloning is used primarily for cloning entire objects or elements in your image. Just Option-click once to set a beginning reference point, and then click (or you can also drag with the cursor like you do when you paint) to clone:

NEXT: Using the History Brush