Photoshop Tutorial: Cloning

I have submited clone images to Flickr in the past and a few times people have asked how to do it, I know personaly speaking that when I was trying to figure it out I had a lot of trouble finding a tutorial that I could get to grips with. I might add that this tutorial is for Photoshop CS2 – I will try to include as many screen captures as I can.

Okay there are two major stages in this tutorial: the first being, the initial capture of the images and the second the processing in Photoshop.

Set up your camera on a tripod or in a position wherebye the camera will not move for the entire photoshoot.

1. Set the camera to full manual mode and begin to take your images that you wish to clone together, using the self timer to release the shutter. It is important that the camera does not move and that the exposures are all the same so when the images are put together there will be a continuity of levels, colour ect. I would recommend taking many more images than you need as once the shoot is over it will be extremely difficult to recreate the same scene(ie light, camera position ect)
2. You are now free to upload your photographs to your computer

I have to stress that the images you take will make or break the final cloned image and its important to have an idea of what you want to achieve beforehand. Now on to the more tricky bit.

1. Open Photoshop
2. Open the images you wish to be included in the cloned image in seperate windows.
3. Select the Polygonal Lasso tool. On the image that will appear at the ‘front’ of the final cloned image(ie the image of the clone closest to the camera) select a rough outline of the person or object – making sure that all shadows cast are included.

4 – Right click on your selection and select ‘Layer Via Copy’. Then by selecting the ‘Move tool’ or the arrow icon on the tool pallete you will be able to drag the selection onto the background image(the photograph where the person or object is farthest away from the camera). Align the selection up with this image.

5- As you can see the from the image above – the clone is by no means perfect at this stage. Overlaping of the subjects may or may not occur. Ensure that the selection is aligned to the background image correctly.For the benefit of this tutorial I will explain how to overcome this problem – feel free to ignore the next following steps if your image does not have overlapping subjects.

6- In the layers Pallete (ensure you have selected the background image for this step). Select ‘Layer 1′ and turn off visibility for the background layer(to turn off visibility simply click on the eye icon on the layer you want to turn invisible) . This should make the background image appear blank apart from the clone which you have cut from the other image.7 – This stage is largely trial and error and you may have to attempt this more than once to achieve the best results. Select the ‘Magnetic Lasso’ tool from the tool pallete (below the Polygonal Lasso you used earlier) and carefully drag the mouse round the clone, cutting out any part of the selection that overlapped the background clone and leaving any additional areas of the image that didnt overlap as these will make the final clone look more believable. Once the selection has been made right click over the slection and select ‘layer via cut’. Then on the layers pallete – deselect visibility for ‘layer 1′ and select visibility for ‘background layer’ (using the eye icons)- you should now see the clone on the background layer.8 – Check the images do not overlap by clicking the invisibility tab on the layers pallete of the background image (where the eye icon should be) if the images are aligned and there is no overlap that compromises the image then you are finished. I would recomend saving your work at this point as a Jpeg image then opening the saved image again – as you will now be able to make colour, contrast, levels ect adjustments to the image.

Okay – I hope this has helped, and if you have any feedback or have any edits you can suggest then please feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email and I will get back to you – also if you have any questions please leave it in the comments box so I can answer you and allow other readers to see too,

Gav