Hard Brush / Soft Brush Cloning issues

[Jim Brennan]

Being self taught in Photoshop, as most of us are, I find that sometimes it’s basic issues that I have problems with.

For instance, I notice while just painting with a soft brush my line was not smooth and I was picking up the round bumps as I drew the line. I realized I was using a soft brush on a hard setting. When I switched to a hard brush the repetitive bumps in the line went away.

I have been trying to smooth out my cloning, so that the repairs are not visible. I often get these stuttering marks.

I’m wondering now, if it from trying to use to hard of a setting on a soft brush. To be honest, I have never really ventured outside of the soft brush. I though just changing the setting to hard changes it, but now I realize I have been misconstrued.

Does anyone have advice on how you use the hard and soft brush and at what setting you switch over?
Like if you find yourself setting the hardness to >50% should I switch from a soft and get a hard brush?

There’s plenty of vids on how to do advanced retouching like frequency separation, but there never seems to be basic information on these things which seem to minor, but are actually turning out to be important.

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