There are few things worse than rips, tears, or cracks from a photo being bent, especially when it happens to old family photos you really care about. Here's a simple technique that lets you hide these nasty rips by "covering" them up. Step One©JIM WORKMAN Scan a photo that has rips, tears, or bends, and open it in the Elements Editor. The photo here has tears from being bent. Step TwoThe plan is to clone over the cracks using noncracked, nearby areas. Start by getting the Clone Stamp tool from the Toolbox (or press the S key). Choose a medium to small, soft-edged brush by clicking on the Brush thumbnail in the Options Bar to open the Brush Picker. Step ThreePress-and-hold the Alt key and click in a "clean" area near the cracked area. (By clean, I mean Alt-click in an area that has no cracks or other visible problems. To help ensure that your repair doesn't look obvious, it's important to click near the tear, but not too far away from it.) Step FourMove the Clone Stamp tool over the rip and click a few times over the crack. Don't paint strokesjust click. As you click, you'll see two cursors: your brush cursor where you're painting and a crosshair cursor over the area you sampled. This lets you see the area you're cloning from (the crosshair) and the area you're cloning to (the brush cursor). This will be your basic strategy for repairing these ripsAlt-click the Clone Stamp tool in a clean area near the crack, then move your cursor over the crack and click a few times until the crack is covered by the cloned areas. For really large cracks, you can paint some small strokes, but be careful not to pick up any repeating patterns that might give you away. Step FiveNow start working on other areas. Press the Z key to switch to the Zoom tool, zoom in if needed, and then switch back to the Clone Stamp tool. (Note: You also might want to try the Healing Brush tool [use it the same wayAlt-click before you start healing] using a similar technique, depending on the photo, as it may work just as well, if not better.) The final result is worth a few minutes of cloning. Before After |