PSPX9 strange artifacts produced with Clone Brush

[SJS]

I am getting very odd behavior from the clone brush that I cannot reproduce "on command". This is over the past couple of weeks or so, with multiple files.

I see strange artifacts: very square/rectangular patterns that start showing up out of nowhere... generally when I am using the clone brush repeatedly overlapping to extend a random fill-in over and area I wish to overwrite. Once these very patterns show up, they sometimes can't be cloned over, even with "continuous" turned off. These look a bit like sections of giant pixels... and not a bit like the areas I am using as the clone brush source (unless the scale is so huge these really are giant pixels?!).

Screen shot shows a recent occurrence of this, with clone brush settings. In this case I have a multi-layer image, and am cloning in/on the Background layer from a section that is transparent in ALL of the other three layers. The problem occurs with brush in both aligned & non-aligned modes. May be related to using Continuous mode: I have had other problems with "Continuous" mode with some brushes (as in "continuous" is just ignored sometimes).

PSPX9 19.2.0.7 x64 Windows 10

[Jean-Luc]

It would perhaps help use if you show, in your screen capture, your Style and texture palette (on the right).

[SJS]

So are you saying that a Clone brush uses textures from the Materials Palette? I am pretty sure that I did not have any Texture active.

Or are you referring to the Brush Variance settings? These were all set to "Normal", as I have never learned to use anything else consistently .

I have sometimes wondered if the Clone Brush is actually picking up the checkerboard grid PSP displays for transparency!!??

I know that I can get corners and straight lines when I run off the edges of my window, but in the example below I was careful to verify that I was not dragging the clone brush source off the edges of my image.

I just reset PSP to defaults, then reloaded my backed up preferences and my workspace. This has fixed another problem; where the Fill Light/Clarity adjustment had completely stopped working). But I do still see the Clone brush problem:

[hartpaul]

Just not sure what you mean by this "In this case I have a multi-layer image, and am cloning in/on the Background layer from a section that is transparent in ALL of the other three layers."
I see in your second posted image two faces and between them some areas that are transparent and some that are a clone of the darker left face.

Are you trying to clone the face onto the background layer or are you trying to make that background layer transparent by cloning from the transparent background of another layer.

Also if your image is greyscale there is a known bug there, but you can work around it by increasing color depth to RGB - 8 bits / channel using Image > Increase Color Depth.

[SJS]

I mis-spoke in the first message, re: cloning into the background layer. The Background layer was NOT the active layer, rather I was cloning into a transparent area of another layer, using the what I consider my picture's background as my source. I have some layers hidden, others visible in the first example, but I no longer have the record of all the settings.

In the second screenshot, I am cloning into the active layer as shown in blue in the screenshot, with Use All Layers turned on. The Background layer has not been promoted, and so has no transparency. It is Hidden (for no good reason).

There is no rationale for the second example: it was only a test to see if the problem persists after my reset to default. For this, I just cloned randomly, but careful to not go over corners & edges. There are no layers (hidden or visible) with hard straight edges or right angles in this piece, so I don't understand why the clone brush is creating these.

Note that "Use All Layers" uses the visible layers, which is very desirable. It lets me turn off partially transparent layers or layers with isolated parts that I don't want to include in cloning.

Clearly I would not expect the grid PSP fills into transparent areas to effect the Clone Brush... and indeed the rectangular "artifacts" here are much larger than the transparent area grid.

[Jean-Luc]

the rectangular "artifacts" here are much larger than the transparent area grid.

You have perhaps erased with a PARTIAL transparency (or with background eraser) before to clone ?

[SJS]

No I don't think there was any erasing at all.

And I very rarely use a square brush shape, or 100% hardness, for anything.

I still have this image open, so I just clicked on a source that looks to be the part of image appearing in this test in piece of one if the "square" artifacts. I still have the same size & other settings on the clone brush. When I cloned into an empty transparent area of one layer, the result looks fine, with no hard corner appearing. I think the artifacts start to appear when I am overlapping to fill in areas, not on the first pass. The source area for the clone brush did not overlap the area I was filling in this test.