Elements Clone Stamp Tool

Used for painting with copied image data
Found at #11 in the Toolbar diagram at left

With the clone stamp tool (formerly known as the rubber stamp tool), you can copy, or clone copies of a portion of an image and paint them onto any other part of the image. The size of the area copied depends on the brush size you select from the brushes pop-up menu on the tool’s options bar. How the copy merges with the new area is determined by the choices you make on the options bar [see below].

Hold down the Alt key while clicking to pick up, or copy the image data you want to transfer. Then move the pointer to where you want to apply that data and click, or click and drag. A cross-hair will appear to indicate where you are copying from. When you start painting, the cross-hair will be at the spot where you Alt-clicked. Depending on whether you chose Aligned in the options bar, the cross-hair will parallel your strokes, or return to that original spot after each release of the mouse button.

Note - if your Alt key does not appear to be working in Elements, you may have another program running in the background that has taken over that key. GuruNet (Atomica) and FlySwat are two such applications. Uninstall them, or reassign the hot key in those programs to regain use of the Alt key in Elements.

You can use the clone, and pattern stamp tools to copy data between different images, as well as within the same image.

A shortcut to change brush sizes while using any of the paint tools, including the clone stamp tool, is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, or the right bracket ] to increase brush size.

The keyboard shortcut for the clone and pattern stamp tools is the letter S.

To choose a brush size and type, click on the brush stroke thumbnail. A pop-up palette of available brushes will appear. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes page.

The box titled Mode, and showing Normal is a drop down menu of all the blend modes. The Use All Layers check box will cause the stamp to copy image data from all visible layers. When unchecked, data is only copied from the selected layer.

The Opacity setting determines how transparent the copied image portions will be when reapplied. A setting of 100 % is completely opaque. 0 % is completely transparent. Type a value in the text box, or access a slider by clicking on the arrow at the right side of the box.

Right-clicking on the image when the clone tool has been selected in the toolbox will cause the brushes pop-up palette to appear next to your cursor. Press Enter or click on your document’s blue title bar to close the pop-up palette.

Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.