1 Open Satori and load the image you want to work on. In our case, we’re removing an anonymous passer-by from this image we shot in Bath. For very large images, Satori will prompt you to convert to its own RIR format first. You should agree, as it speeds up loading, saving and on-screen rendering by a noticeable amount. Using the zoom tool, close in on the area to be retouched and render a detailed view by clicking on the Hi-Rez button.
2 Click Paint in the Actions palette, then switch to the Brushes tab. Change from the default Solid brush to the Clone brush – this ‘clones’ existing areas of an image over a new one, and is unique to digital art. In your zoomed view, right-click anywhere and select Set Layer Clone Offset from the pop-up menu. The cursor will change to a rubber stamp – click on the part of the image you want to use, then click again after moving the mouse down or across the area you want to clone.
3 Brush with the mouse in even, gentle strokes to replace damaged or unwanted sections of the image with clones of clean parts. As you can see here, we’re brushing downwards to gradually replace the woman’s head with the image of the stone pillar. Change your clone offset frequently, and approach different sections from alternate directions to avoid heavy and obvious cloning of one small spot.
4 If you didn’t vary your clone offset often enough, you might end up with sections of the image that look obviously retouched – a tiled effect. Go back to the Actions palette, and change brush type from Clone to Smudge. Gently brush over the obvious areas to blend the detail and remove the tiling effect – you may find that switching to the Size tab in Actions and lowering the brush sensitivity will help here.
5 Since Satori works best with its own vector-based RIR format, you’ll need to export to a standard bitmap image type to use your work in other applications. Select Save As from the File menu and choose your format from the list Satori supports. You can specify the output size and DPI ratio for your bitmap – huge images will take up a lot of disk space, depending on the chosen format.
6 Satori may take some considerable time to produce the finished output file, depending on the output format you chose, the final pixel size and whether or not you selected Use fast renderer. In our case, Satori generated a compressed PNG file in a few minutes with an 8Mb file size – but the results were well worth it, as you can see from the finished result.