Cloning Tips
Lordy, it's been a while.
I've been cloning out some older film scan master files, and I thought I'd share some good ideas.
Good Idea #1: Clone at 100%.
Look, it's just not a good idea to try to clone out defects at anything less than 100%. You'll kill your eyes, miss details, and waste paper when you have that "A-ha" moment upon realizing the print you're about to deliver has ph* from the original film right along the edge, where everyone will see it.
Good Idea #2: Get a scroll mouse.
Cloning always involves moving through an entire image, and a mouse with a scroll wheel makes this arduous task a lot easier. Whether you are cloning out dirt from your digital camera's sensor or scratches from a careless film processing company, paging through 300 megabytes of image data can be no fun. A scroll wheel won't have you doing somersaults, but it does speed things up.
I usually clone from the top left corner to the lower right. I used to move in blocks by using the Page Down key, scanning the image on the screen for defects, then hitting Page Down again until I'd reviewed one vertical "row" of the image. Then I'd click once in the bottom scroll bar to move right and start using Page Up to move up along the next row.
Like mowing a yard....ad infinitum. This takes your hands off the mouse a lot, adding the risk of nasty computyer-related wrist injuries.
The ability to notch slowly and precisely up and down through an image (as opposed to a page at a time with the Page Up/Down keys) is a godsend on my 300-600MB 4X5 scans. I use one hand on the scroll wheel and mouse buttons while another toggles the option key (to define the origin for cloning or healing brushes).
Another advantage is that the scrolling action, while a little slower than typing Page Up several times, is a lot better at helping you catch dust. The picture should be moving along slowly in front of your eyes - almost scrolling, but at a much more controlled and constant speed. The advantage is twofold - no artifacts from redrawing (at least on my computer) and your eyes' natural propensity for catching small objects in motion against a background is apt to help you notice miscellaneous gradoux.
On Mac OS X, holding the shift key causes the scroll wheel to switch axes; once I reach the bottom or top of an image, I can precisely move over to the next "row" by holding Shift and moving the wheel one notch down to nudge to the right. I'm pretty sure it'd work this way in Windows, too.
Good Idea #3: Practice using the Cloning Brush
This sounds like an entry into the "duh" awards, but at least with film scans, repeated abuse of the healing brush will soften and mush out the grain structure. In a big print, you'll definitely see this effect, and it is distracting.
Photographers I talk to often have the attitude that the "Healing Brush makes the Cloning Brush obsolete". That might be true in many cases, but it's still a good idea to practice being precise with the cloning brush. It takes some practice and skill, but before long, you'll be Option/Alt-clicking at a mad pace.
Another reason to stick with the cloning tool is along the edges. If you have your film scanned full-frame like I do and use cropping guides instead of cropping your originals, (cropping originals is destructive editing, and that's a Bad Thing) you'll find that the healing brush's intelligence is limited along the edges of an image. To do it's magic, the healing brush averages pixels from around the brush area into the brush area; it's almost impossible to use this tool to hide defects along edges because the black edges are "averaged" into the image area.
I had another good cloning idea, but I forgot what it was.
*ph - a catch-all term for those curly-cue pieces of dust. I'll let you guess at the etymology.
I've been cloning out some older film scan master files, and I thought I'd share some good ideas.
Good Idea #1: Clone at 100%.
Look, it's just not a good idea to try to clone out defects at anything less than 100%. You'll kill your eyes, miss details, and waste paper when you have that "A-ha" moment upon realizing the print you're about to deliver has ph* from the original film right along the edge, where everyone will see it.
Good Idea #2: Get a scroll mouse.
Cloning always involves moving through an entire image, and a mouse with a scroll wheel makes this arduous task a lot easier. Whether you are cloning out dirt from your digital camera's sensor or scratches from a careless film processing company, paging through 300 megabytes of image data can be no fun. A scroll wheel won't have you doing somersaults, but it does speed things up.
I usually clone from the top left corner to the lower right. I used to move in blocks by using the Page Down key, scanning the image on the screen for defects, then hitting Page Down again until I'd reviewed one vertical "row" of the image. Then I'd click once in the bottom scroll bar to move right and start using Page Up to move up along the next row.
Like mowing a yard....ad infinitum. This takes your hands off the mouse a lot, adding the risk of nasty computyer-related wrist injuries.
The ability to notch slowly and precisely up and down through an image (as opposed to a page at a time with the Page Up/Down keys) is a godsend on my 300-600MB 4X5 scans. I use one hand on the scroll wheel and mouse buttons while another toggles the option key (to define the origin for cloning or healing brushes).
Another advantage is that the scrolling action, while a little slower than typing Page Up several times, is a lot better at helping you catch dust. The picture should be moving along slowly in front of your eyes - almost scrolling, but at a much more controlled and constant speed. The advantage is twofold - no artifacts from redrawing (at least on my computer) and your eyes' natural propensity for catching small objects in motion against a background is apt to help you notice miscellaneous gradoux.
On Mac OS X, holding the shift key causes the scroll wheel to switch axes; once I reach the bottom or top of an image, I can precisely move over to the next "row" by holding Shift and moving the wheel one notch down to nudge to the right. I'm pretty sure it'd work this way in Windows, too.
Good Idea #3: Practice using the Cloning Brush
This sounds like an entry into the "duh" awards, but at least with film scans, repeated abuse of the healing brush will soften and mush out the grain structure. In a big print, you'll definitely see this effect, and it is distracting.
Photographers I talk to often have the attitude that the "Healing Brush makes the Cloning Brush obsolete". That might be true in many cases, but it's still a good idea to practice being precise with the cloning brush. It takes some practice and skill, but before long, you'll be Option/Alt-clicking at a mad pace.
Another reason to stick with the cloning tool is along the edges. If you have your film scanned full-frame like I do and use cropping guides instead of cropping your originals, (cropping originals is destructive editing, and that's a Bad Thing) you'll find that the healing brush's intelligence is limited along the edges of an image. To do it's magic, the healing brush averages pixels from around the brush area into the brush area; it's almost impossible to use this tool to hide defects along edges because the black edges are "averaged" into the image area.
I had another good cloning idea, but I forgot what it was.
*ph - a catch-all term for those curly-cue pieces of dust. I'll let you guess at the etymology.
Labels: Archived
posted by Doug at 8:47 PM
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