Recently, one of our members needed to alter an area of an image but leave some other part of the image untouched. There are many ways to do this. One of the ways to do this is using the Clone tool in registered mode.
The clone tool is described in detail in Gimp Help. It is not my intention to repeat the excellent write up in the Help section, rather I wish to briefly show some of the practical uses of the clone tool and act as a reminder for the different modes.
Most cloning operations are on the same layer to hide or fix an imperfection. In the hands of a skilled operator it is a very powerful tool. You can clone from any open target image or layer onto another image or layer. You simply select your "from" source and use Ctl to set your cloning start point.
You can clone from a pattern or an image, however I see very little use for the clone pattern option.
There are four modes of cloning; none, aligned, registered and fixed. I see very little use for the fixed mode.









Obviously, this an extreme example to show the workings of the Registered mode. In most cases the altered image is more subtle. The selection is sharp. and as you can see the alteration brushstrokes did not occur on the "do not alter" selection. Depending on your requirements you can use a soft brush , alter the layer mode and opacity to suit. This clone mode is very handy to bring out some colour in a b/w image. If you make a mistake you can use the undo history to reset where you made the mistake. Here I duplicated the image , desaturated it, set my "from point" on the coloured image and cloned on the b/w layer to bring back the colour in selected spots.



I hope this has jogged your memory or made you think a bit more about the "humble" clone tool and its uses!

Thank you very much wooble. I have never used the clone in any mode except the default before.
Here is my first stab at it and I think it works great for removing backgrounds also.
I took this picture with the pansys and clicked the layer with the clone tool, added a transparent layer above and used the new layer to paint on. I just wanted the one pansy so I cloned that onto the new layer using the registered mode which I never used before. Works great.
clone layers

Thank you so much for your information, wbool63. I had no idea about what this tool can do. I'll have to practise it quite a lot, I suppose.

Hi, I'm new, what can you tell me about using the clone tool on mac. I can select an area using command click but when I proceed to clone it won't do anything. What do you advise? Thank you.
t_rex

What I did was open a layer, a picture of anything you want. Make a new transparent layer above it.
On the bottom layer, select the clone tool and put it in the registered mode. CTRL click on the bottom layer, then go to your new transparent layer and clone as if you were painting around the part you want to put on the new layer, as you saw in my screen shots, I painted the one pansy, (with the clone tool) and you now have a new layer with your pansy on it.]
1. click bottom layer with clone tool
2. make new transparent layer
3. start painting on the new layer with the clone tool, make sure it is in the registered mode.

Select a different or larger sized brush.
Clone tool

Molly, Thank You trying out the tut. An excellent example of one of its uses. What you can do now, is change one of the images (say in colour). Now use the opacity slider or layer mode to see an immediate effect of the combination of the two layers. When you are happy with your new result you an re-merge the two layers with your filtered effect.

I don't know quite what you are saying.
You say change one of the images, do you mean for me to dupe the pansy layer on the transparent layer, or change the opacity of the top layer. I am confused.

As Molly, had only used this tool in default mode
I used the aligned mode to merge the two faces .
Changed only slightly the resulting color and voila. (just for fun)

Ty wbool63!

Nice tutorial, always having to look up how to use the clone tool and never read about the different modes before.

very cool akros.
I think I will be spending more time playing with the settings of different tools. There are so many that do a lot more than we think. I want to try the clone on a person with fly away hair to see how close I can get to removing the background without making the hair have the chopped look.

Molly, perhaps this will help. I copied your image and did the same as you







Akros, thank you for providing a sample of using the clone tool . The morph is very good.

Thank you for explaining wooble, now I see what you are saying, takes a while for this N00b to catch on sometimes,
I will be doing some more experimenting with this.
Now I can't leave it alone, I don't have a camera that you can blur the background so I thought I would try it with your method, I made a new transparent layer and selected all around the flowers onto the new layer, then I blurred the background 15 pixels and this is what I got, I will finesse it more later,
source

result

Well Done, Molly. You have just created Shallow Depth of Field where none existed before.
I should point out there are other ways to achieve this result, such as using masks and selections. However this does not detract from your method with the clone tool. Great job!

Thank you wooble, I don't get along well with masks, they are confusing to say the least, but anyway, I love the way that feature in the clone tool works. I just did another picture of my neighbors baby and I blurred the background and it is cool.