Clone tool tutorial

From worth1000.com, a tutorial on using the clone tool to remove a large element from an image.

Link:  http://fxb.worth1000.com/tutorials/161615/removing-things-from-your-pictures-with-clone


Starting with the image of the dog as they have used in the tutorial we have this desert image:

As noted in the tutorail, I looked for consistint highlight lines to guide my paint strokes and to anchor the clone tool's sampling location.  Starting from higher to lower, I deviated from the tutorial by using a slightly larger brush size for the blurrier areas higher up, as this avoided sharp details sticking out in the soft focus areas of the image.

 So it's easy to see that the highlight lines of the sand don't go simply horizontal but rather at a lightly angle top right to bottom left direction.  Tracing over these areas, resampling from random points as the tutorial instructed, and decreasing the brush size gradually as I moved down the image...

The most tedious and difficult portion of editing this image was in the sharpest focused porions right at the ground level where the dogs feet touch the ground....repeated resampling helped apply a randomness and avoided obvious patterns in the cloning.

Just to experiment with some more editing, I added this hastily selected meerkat from another photo....not a great source as it's missing feet...