GIMP Clone Tool

A friend emailed me an image today that he hoped I could help with:

Specifically, he wanted to know if I could remove the sprinkler and the hose from the lower left portion of the grass.  I, of course, wanted to know why he couldn't have simply moved them before he pressed the shutter....

Anyway, it is just as well, I have been wanting to play more with GIMP (version 2.8.2 - Mac), so this worked well as a first test image.  I decided to just use the Clone Tool, but had some initial difficulties since the instructions are all for Windows versions of GIMP.  Additionally, since I have been playing with Inkscape the past week, I became pretty used to using the control key, and it took a while before I remembered that since GIMP is now a native Mac app (it no longer requires X11 to run), I should be using the command (⌘) key.

Once I got past that, it was simple:

Click the Clone Tool: 

I then experimented with different brushes, eventually settling on this one:

I was happy to discover that the bracket - [ ] - keys function much the same way as they do in Photoshop, which is that they enlarge and reduce the size of the brush.  Very convenient.  I made the brush about 2/3 the height of the sprinkler, after zooming to 200%

After discovering the command key thing I mentioned above, it was a simple matter to place the brush outline in a clean piece of grass, command-click to set that as the source for the cloning, and start clicking away.

I also tried out a few different modes in the Tool Options window, and decided that Normal was indeed the best.  I also set the Alignment to Aligned, so that the lighting would be pretty even throughout the fixed region.

Once I finished the first run through, I did few random selections to remove the most glaring areas of parallel cloning, and got this:

You can still see some remnants of where the clones happened, but only if you know where to look.  For a 3 minute exercise, I am pretty happy.

Saving the image was a bit different than I had anticipated; it was necessary to Export (instead of Save As):

I sent it to the same folder I opened from, with a new name, still as a JPEG, and checked the box for Use quality settings from original image:

The new image is 3 MB, versus 3.1 in the original.