Problem: When working with photographs occasionally you are presented with a photograph that is contaminated with finger prints, has ripped edges or creases. Sublimating this image is not a good idea as the final image is only going to look as bad as the original.
Solution: The best way to fix up these imperfections is with the clone tool that is provided in Corel PhotoPaint.
Assess Your Photo
First we need to bring in an image that has imperfections. Figure 1 is a photo that I printed out on my inkjet printer. I made a few imperfections in the image to use for this demo. We have a couple of tears a smudge mark and a finger print.
Select the Clone Tool
Next zoom in on the area that you want to fix up. Let us start in the blue area to the left of my daughter.
Now we need to activate the Clone tool. Go to the left tool bar and click on the bottom image (paint brush – Corel 9 and 10 – in Corel 11 it is in with the red eye tool). See Figure 2. Expand out the tool bar if the clone tool is not selected – tool with the red box around it.
Select Your Brush Size
Next we need to select our brush size. When we activate the clone tool the property bar at the top of the screen becomes active showing the various tool settings that are available to us. See Figure 3.
Clone Tool – Lets you duplicate part of an image and apply it to another part of the image or to another image. The Property Bar provides specialized cloning brushes that create a duplicate in the pointillist (dots) style and impressionist (lines) style.
Brush Type – This setting allows you to choose different brush types.
Nib Shape – The nib shape setting allows you to specify a nib shape and size.
Select and Area
Next zoom in to the area that you want to work on
When we use the clone tool in Corel PhotoPaint what we are doing is taking information from one are and using that information to place it over an area that is ripped, faded etc.
Select your clone tool, use Normal clone and choose a brush size as per Figure 3.
When you bring your cursor out to the image you will notice that it is round (the shape of the brush). You can change the size by lowering the number as per Figure 3 (lower the number from 25 to say 15).
Now we need to tell PhotoPaint the area that we want to sample. The best way to do this is to right click with our mouse on the area that we want to sample (make sure that you choose the area that is as close to the area that you want to clone).
Figure 4 shows the cursor as it appears when we right click on the image.
Now move your cursor over the area that you want to paste your info onto.
Now left click on the area. The information that you sampled is now placed over the area.
See part two
