Master Smithy Mithrin's PSP Cloning Tool Tutorial

Ok. The first thing I want you to do is to open the two images that we are going to work with in PSP. Then select the Cloning Tool button. (Pic.1) I've aimed the red arrow at it in case you can't find it. Now let's explain the Cloning Toolbar (circled with red in Pic.1).

First you'll see the little x. This will make the toolbar disappear when you click on it but we don't want that to happen now. To the right of it you will see a circle. Click on it and a new window will popup showing all the different brush tips that you can select. I am not going to explain all of them now. For now I just want you to select the default tip. Please try out the other tips after you've finished this tutorial. There are some really neat ones that can give your cloning a real cool effect.

Then to the right we see Shape. You can choose between a circle and a square. Make sure the circle is selected. Next to that we have Size. I think this one speaks for itself. It determines the size of your cloning brush. Now we get to the interesting part.

On the Clone Toolbar you'll also see the options Hardness, Density, Thickness and Opacity. You will also notice Step and Rotation. Set Step to 25 for now and Rotation to 0. Rotation will let you rotate the brush. You won't notice any difference with the standard round brush but select one of the unique ones and change the rotation and you will notice that the tip of the brush is rotated to the value you entered.

For a visual explanation of the following settings look at Pic.2

Hardness: This determines the hardness of the brush, just like it does for real pencils. So a setting of 100 will give a nice round shape with sharp edges while a setting of 0 will have soft edges.

Density: This determines the density of the paint. At 100 the paint will be very solid and at a setting of 1 only a few dots of paint will show up.

Thickness: This will change the thickness of the brush.

Opacity: Changing this setting from 100 to 0 will make the paint look more and more translucent.

You will also see a small field called Blend Mode. Here you can select different effects that will be applied while you clone. Just fool around with it a bit to see what choices you have. Then set it back to Normal for this tutorial. Now at the end make sure the box next to Aligned Mode is checked and we'll move on with the next step.

Now here we go. Make sure the Cloning Brush is selected. Copy the settings from the Cloning Toolbar in picture one to make sure you have the same configuration as me. Now remember what we were going to do. The idea was to clone a part of that branch with the raven on it and clone it on the picture with the horse. So first select the raven picture. Now move your cursor and stop it at the beginning of the branch with the raven sitting on it. Then press Shift and keep it pressed and Right-Click. Now let go. So what did we do now? We determined the cloning starting point. This starting point will show up wherever you'll left-click now.

Select the horse picture and move the cursor to the left of the image to the point where you want that branch with the raven to start. Now left click and notice that the starting point that you selected on the other image now appears under your cursor. (Pic.3) Start drawing more of the branch and the raven until you are satisfied. Notice that some vegetation is sticking out between some of the raven's feathers. To prevent you from cloning them too you can decrease the size of the brush and then just carefully draw the feathers.

So there it is. You have learned the basics of cloning now! (Pic.4)