The Clone tool is the most popular used for removing blemishes from images. An unwanted tree or telegraph pole emerging from an object, adding or repeating a detail in another part of an image and so on. It is a fairly straightforward tool in itself, but in any image program there are certain things that one has to be aware of before trying to use it.
For this task, we'll use the picture of the two men on a beach, and try and remove the unfortunately placed flagpole.
First of all open the 'on the beach' image.
Next in order to better see what you are retouching, you should zoom in on the area of the man on the right and the flag pole.
The zoom tool can be found in the Tool Box - (arrowed left).
You can 'draw' a rectangle over the area to zoom in on it more effectively (see screen shot left). Or you can just left click a couple of times on the area you want to zoom in on.
Step 2 - Add a new layer
Tip: to avoid destroying the original image pixels, add a new transparent layer to 'draw' cloned pixels on to.
Go to the Layers palette and click on the new layer icon (arrowed). The layer should be transparent.
Then in the Layers palette, select the background layer again to begin cloning. This technique involves swapping between the background layer and your newly created transparent layer.
The Clone Tool is arrowed on the left, in the lower portion of the Toolbox. The icon is supposed to represent a 'stamp'. Once selected, go down to the Tool Options panel and set the brush type and size you want (circled left). The best to use at present are the 'Circle Fuzzy' at 033 (pixels). Click on the little plus sign in the brush icon.
Now you are ready to Clone.
Make sure you have the background layer selected. To select the pixels you want to use, hold down the CTRL key and then click over some pixels on the sky either to the left or right of the flag pole - horizontally adjascent to the top of the flagpole where you want to 'remove' it. You will see the cursor change to a circle/target shape (see screenshot left). Left click once to 'mark' where you are cloning pixels from.
Now switch layers, by clicking on the transparent layer you added in the Layers palette.
Start brushing over the flagpole area with your clones pixels (see right hand screen shot). You will see a 'cross hair' marking where you are picking pixels up from.
Before you get to the man's head, stop and now do two things.
1)
adjust the width of the clone brush, you should take it down to around 10 - 20 pixels maximum. You might also want to use the 'Scale' slider to make the brush smaller.
2) Zoom in yet further to make these last retouches.
Don't forget to 'pick up' the pixels you want from the 'background' layer, then switch to the new Layer to retouch.
You can check the difference between the original and the retouching, just be turning on and off the visibility of the new layer. You must save the new file as a Paintshop Pro or Photoshop format image if you want to prserve the layers, otherwise use File > Save As to save the retouched image as a jpeg with a new file name.