Know When to Clone Instead of Heal?

The Healing Brushes work best when what you want to remove is more like an island—it’s not touching the edge of anything else. That’s because where it touches the edge, it tends to smear (that’s why it works so well for blemishes and spots—they are like islands). Let’s say, for example, you want to remove a power line. When it touches a power line pole, it’s going to smear there for sure, so what I do is switch to the Clone Stamp tool (S) and clone away a little part of the power line manually (press-and-hold the Option [PC: Alt] key, click once in the sky near the power line, and than paint right over it and it clones that piece of sky over the power line). This creates a little break on this end of the power line. Do the same thing on the other end of it—create a little break in the line, so there’s a gap on each end. It’s no longer touching anything because you made those gaps. Now, you can use the Healing Brush tool to quickly get rid of that power line without worrying about any smearing. Another time you’d want to use the Clone Stamp tool is when you need to cover something by repeating something else. For example, if you wanted to repair a wall on an office building and wanted to cover the area with a window, you’d Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the window to sample it, move your cursor where you want a clone of that window to appear (over the area you want to repair or hide with a window), just start painting, and it paints a window. The Clone Stamp tool is great for repeating patterns or duplicating stuff, like painting nice green grass over a brown patch or painting more hair over a bald spot (not that I would ever do that. Ever. Nope. Not me). The Healing Brushes are for getting rid of stuff.