Clone Stamp on multiple layers/files with their own clone source?

Question

I'm asking in most regard of Photoshop techniques/plugins, but I'm also open to other software.

In the application of 3D, a lot of times artists need to clone stamp multiple layers/files with each of their own clone sources. One use case is to fix multi-angle light shots that are used to generate a normal map, and make it a seamless texture in the process. If you have a dust/smudge, for example, you need to fix it in every images since the dust/smudge appears in every shot, but each image has to have different clone source because the lighting is different.

One workaround I use is Substance Designer's "Multi Clone Patch" node, as it can apply the same clone to every input, but this is not as ideal as using Photoshop when you want to get into heavy editing/clone stamping on multiple layers or files.

I could record the Photoshop Clone Stamp into an action with "Tool Recording" on, but it will be very complicate and impractical. The tool recording is not so reliable, and if I messed one stroke recording then the whole action is trashed.

Answer 1

I found a workaround to pull off this tricky thing: one can use After Effects to deal with the fix/clone pixels on multiple files. After Effects also has a Clone Stamp just like Photoshop, as well as the offset filter. So, AE will satisfy all the needs to make seamless textures on multiple images files.

Here are the steps in After Effects:

1. Import multiple image files as an image sequence layer.
2. Apply an offset filter to offset the seams to the center of the layer:

3. Use (multiple) Clone Stamp to eliminate any imperfections & seams:

4. Apply another offset filter to reverse the first offset.
5. Render the layer into image sequences (individual image files), preferably in lossless formats.
6. Done!