by Pattie Knox
Using a Custom Brush with the Clone Stamp
Custom Brushes are extremely popular among digital artists—and for good reason. Often thought of as the digital equivalent of rubber stamps, brushes are indispensable tools for adding flair to your work.
Here’s a quick trick using a custom brush with the Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to create the look of a masked photo in a snap! You’ll begin with two documents open in your workspace — the layout in progress and a photo.
- Click directly on the photo to make it the active document.
- Select the Clone Stamp tool from the Toolbox.
- From the Options bar click the Show selected brush presets drop-down menu.
- Double click the brush of choice to load.
- Position the cursor to cover the desired area of your photo. (Resize the brush by pressing the [ or ] keys to increase or decrease the brush diameter )
- Press ALT (OPTION on Mac) while clicking once on the photo to sample the image.
- Switch to the document containing your layout in progress.
- In the Layers palette, create a new blank layer above all other layers.
- Position the brush and click the left mouse button once to “stamp” the image onto the new blank layer you created.
Looks fabulous doesn’t it? (We won’t tell anyone how easy it was if you don’t!)
Pattie Knox shares her combined love of digital design and teaching others through her series of online digital classes at Creative Passion Classes. She also designs digital products for Designer Digitals and is a member of the Wacom Penscrappers Team. To learn more about her you can visit Pattie’s blog.
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This looks like an awesome technique, unfortunately I am having trouble with it. When I stamp it onto my blank layer it only stamps the pixels that are actually on the stamp itself, rather than the stamp and all that is inside it. I hope this makes sense. Any idea what I may be doing wrong?
Thanks so much!
PS – I use PS CS3
Are you sure that you performed Step 6 above?
“Press ALT (OPTION on Mac) while clicking once on the photo to sample the image.”
This is the step that samples (or makes a copy of) the portion of your photo you want to “stamp”.
Pattie
Thanks for your quick response. It was the right technique but used with the wrong type of brush! The brush had an inside border so it was not sampling the entire inside part of the image.
Ah! One of those things that makes you crazy until you figure it out…happens to me ALL of the time. :) I’m glad you got things squared away though.
Does anyone know why suddenly my elements clone stamp cursor looks like a stamper instead of a circle?
You’re soooo gifted in writing. God is truly using you in miraculous methods. You’re doing a excellent job! This was an awesome blog!
I can’t get this to work either. Pam wrote she was using the wrong kind of brush. How do I know which is the right one. I choose a brush, position the cursor on the picture, do I then “draw” around what I want? That is the only thing it will let me do…
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Patti can you tell us what brush you are using please?
And where to buy it.