Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Cloning Between Documents

The Clone Stamp tool is great for tricks like banishing shiny spots (Zapping Shines and Shadows) or giving someone a third eye, but it has other uses, too. You can also use it to copy bits and pieces of an image from one open document to another. Using the Clone Source panel—the clone source is the object you’re copying—you can clone from up to five different sources whether or not they’re in the same Photoshop document. Here’s how to clone from one open image into another:

1. Open the source document(s) (the image[s] you’re cloning from) and the target document (the image you’re cloning to) and arrange your workspace.

   To choose clone sources in documents other than the current image, open the source documents. Then choose Window→Arrange and pick a setup that lets you see all the open documents, or just click each document’s tab to activate it (see Arranging Open Images in Chapter 3 for more on working with tabbed documents).

   Note

   For info on using the Clone Stamp tool within the same document, skip ahead to Zapping Shines and Shadows.

2. Press S to grab the Clone Stamp tool, and then open the Clone Source panel.

   Choose Window→Clone Source or click the panel’s icon in the panel dock. (Full coverage of the Clone Source panel’s many options starts on Cloning Between Documents.)

3. Set the clone source.

   Click the window (or tab) of the image you want to clone from (like the cats in Figure 8-23, top left). Then Option-click (Alt-click on a PC) the area you want to copy to set ...