The Clone Stamp Tool

Because many of my negatives and slides are nearly four decades old, some are heavily damaged with dust and even mildew. Once again, enter Photoshop. I had been copying and pasting to cover dust and other damage, but this is a tedious task. Fortunately my son Ben was home this week on his spring break from teaching journalism at IU, and he showed me Photoshop's "Clone Stamp" tool. With this tool, simply "alt" left-click on a spot that you want to "clone," and then mouse over and left-click on the spot you want to clone to (your "target" area). It's a little tricky and takes some getting used to, and it helps to blow up the image quite a bit to get greater control. When you do, though, the tool gets larger too, so you have to go into the "Brush" menu (shown below) to select the width of the brush you want to use for the cloning.

Below is the final (cropped) version, after various adjustments (discussed in previous posts and including some more attention to the "Hue/Saturation" tool) and with most of the damage "cloned" out of the image.