I had a few requests for some added information, so page 4 was born. First I'd like to show you the options to be found on the Retouch Tool. On that graphic is also the tool box image with an arrow pointing to the Retouch Tool and the Clone Tool. On the Retouch Tool, you have 19 options. Along with those options, you also have to consider your brush size, shape and opacity.
One of the requests I had was to give a few Cloning Tips. Remember when I said I set the clone brush to between 5 and 10 pixels when working on the cat? I also said you could play with the opacity if you don't want the coverage in the clone area to be as visible. When I'm cloning a small area such as the cat's chest, I first right click to the left or right of the area I want to clone. I stay on the same level line of the area and left click to drop the clone in.
If it's a line I'm covering, I will continue down the one side in this manner. Then if I'm not happy yet, I go to the other side of the line area I was cloning out, and I once again right click and begin to drop in the clone. In other words, I clone from both sides of the area to be covered and get it to mix more naturally. As I move down the line, I right click to copy, slide over to my bad spot, left click to paste the clone in. If you stay on the same line as what you are covering, most of the time the clone will not show but will fit perfectly. Patience is the key. Here I am working my way down the wire that is sticking up the front of the kitty.
When I was cloning in Amy's hair, I followed the line of her hair carefully, moving with the line of the hair. As the hair line curved, I moved my clone to follow that curve. You can fix so many things with careful cloning, and I've got a nickname, Queen of the Clone Brush. It's important to remember that if you want the clone to look natural, you must clone close to what you want to cover. You want the cloned-in area to match with its surroundings.
After I Cloned out the wire, I then lightened the fur using the Retouch Tool.
Then I used the Soften option to mute the jpg squares. ? You know, those squares you get or see with computer images. Since this was from a digital camera photo, and it was an underexposed area, I did have those annoying squares.
Ok......in the home stretch now.
I go back to Lightness Up and lighten the area around the eye hairs & the eyes too.
One more thing. I use Saturation Up to bring out the green eyes.
And here is the kitty photo edited without a good photo handy.
It's not as good as the
one where I pasted a good image of the kitty, but it's not bad.
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