Called the 'Rubber Stamp' tool until Photoshop 6, the clone stamp tool takes a sample of an image,
which you can then use like painting a colour, with the bonus that it matches texture and colour changes to your sampled area. It is excellent for removing blemishes such as spots and hairs from a photo, or painting out TV aerials and power lines.

 

To use the clone stamp tool:

1 Select the clone stamp tool. Make sure that you have not got the Pattern Stamp tool by mistake - which is grey at the bottom.

2 Choose a brush size from the pop-up palette in the options bar.
If a brush is too large to fit in the palette, it appears as a smaller brush with a number indicating the actual diameter in pixels.

3 Position the pointer on the part of any open image you want to sample, and Alt-click. Let go of the mouse button! This sample point is the location from which the image is duplicated as you paint. Note: If you are sampling from one image and applying to another, both images must be in the same color mode eg RGB or index or CMYK.

4 Drag keeping your mouse button
down to paint with the tool.

The Clone Stamp tool

1 Specify a blending mode and opacity.

2 Select Aligned to apply the entire sampled area once, regardless of how many times you stop and resume painting. This option is useful when you want to use different sized brushes to paint an image. If Aligned is deselected, the sampled area is applied from the initial sampling point each time you stop and resume painting. Because the clone stamp tool samples the entire image, this option is useful for applying multiple copies of the same part of an image to different images, or for painting on many instances of the same flower/leaf etc.

3 Select Use All Layers to sample data from all visible layers. If this is deselected, the tool samples only from the active layer.

4 If you are using a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet, specify the effects of stylus pressure such as whether the brush size or opacity increase when you press harder.