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Spotlight on Photoshop CS2: Vanishing Point
Cloning, duplicating and transforming with perspective Cloning with perspective
I think first and foremost, Vanishing Point is about cloning. But not just regular old cloning, like you get with the Clone Stamp tool in the main interface. Within Vanishing point, the "Stamp" tool, as it's called, serves a dual purpose: regular cloning, plus healing features similar to those of the Healing Brush tool. With this tool selected, you can not only clone elements while maintaining relative perspective, but also force the cloned elements to match the colors in the destination pixel for smoother, more natural blending.

Take, for example, an image that I showed you in my preliminary coverage of Photoshop CS2. Here I've drawn a red X in the middle of a patio deck. And I'm going to eliminate that by selecting a clone source nearby, turning on the Heal function for the Stamp tool and brushing over the affected pixels. Click the Play button on the QuickTime movie below to see the process in action.



In the example above, I went over the destination twice because, initially, the Heal function picked up some of the red from the X I had drawn on the area. But a second pass eliminated this completely. Notice that I didn't have to reset the clone source because, after my initial stroke, the clone source becomes aligned to the brush, so it will match up no matter where I apply it.

The Stamp tool does not have to be used with the Heal feature enabled. (Heal can be on or off, and it includes a "Luminance" option as well for simply copying the luma values of the source pixels and applying them to the destination.) Nor do you have to align the Stamp tool when you use it. But it can help make these sorts of tricky situations much more simple to deal with.



The Stamp tool also includes options for diameter, hardness (of the brush) and opacity. In addition, it also allows you to click on one section, then Shift-click on another to fill all of the pixels between the two clicks.


One other important thing to consider about cloning with the Stamp tool is that you aren't restricted to a single plane. In the first movie I showed you, I demonstrated cloning from the top surface of the bench to the side surface. Using this method, the clone operation calculates the original perspective of the element I'm cloning, then distorts it to match the perspective of the second (or third or fourth) plane to which I'm applying the clone.

Why would you care? Well, consider situations where you have to clean up elements on stairs or other objects that have more than one plane. With the Stamp tool in Vanishing Point, you can fix up incredibly complex objects easily. And, hence, we can do something like this with just a quick setup of our planes and maybe eight or nine quick swipes of the Stamp tool.

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