(Photo courtesy of Linda Richters) With Linda's permission to use her image, I thought it might be useful to post a quick "how to" in case anyone's interested. Mind you, this was a quick hack job, but with some extra loving care, it could work well.

Instead of trying to clone at the outset because the hair is so detailed, I started by making a rough selection of hair to copy to a new layer. I made one big selection, pressed cmd + J to copy that selection to its own layer, then moved it to cover the blurry corner:

1. Selection


2. Cmd + J to copy to new layer and move


To cover the rest of the blurry corner, I made another selection of hair to copy based on the direction of hair visible on the left and its slightly darker color.

3. Selection


4. Cmd + J to copy selection to new layer, then move (I placed this selection behind the first to make blending easier and look a bit more natural)


I then masked both new layers to blend away the "cut out" edges.

5. The result after masking, and a close-up of the layers palette to show the masks applied


I was bothered by the dark "crease" that remained on the left and the fact that the patch on the right looked too dark as well for being on the lit side of her face. I added two curves adjustments layers--one for each patch of hair--set the blending mode to "Screen," inverted the mask, then painted back in with white using a low-opacity brush. (I could have done this on just one layer, but I was working quickly and it didn't occur to me at the time. ) I also adjusted the opacity of the curves layers so the color looked more natural.

6. Lightness adjusted and close-up of the layers palette to show masks applied


The bluriness bugged me a little, so my final step was doing "the move"--shift + alt + cmd + e--to merge visible onto a new layer for cloning and final clean-up. (I usually just do this on a blank layer with the cloning stamp set to sample all layers, but the masks were futzing with that method.) I used a large stamp with 0% hardness and 100% opacity to cover up the blurry areas with a couple clicks.

7. Final image and close-up of final layers palette


Hope that all made sense.

Wow, that really came out nice.

Final image and close-up of final layers palette:

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Well done and thanks for sharing :-)

The best ideas are sometimes the simplest ones. Well done!

Wow. I alway appreciate getting edumacated.