Cs5...clone stamp, healing

Hey all! Been running into issues with clone stamp and healing/spot healing.
Clone:
Let's say I have a team photo with an asphalt road behind the team. It is the best direction to avoid sunlight squinty eyes.
When i go to stamp out the road all is well until it's close to my subject and it seems to bleed over onto the group. How can i prevent/fix this?

Healing:
Let's say same issue as above. Road is narrow but near the group. When I try to heal an area, it seems to sample from the group and puts them in place of the road, instead of the surrounding trees/grass etc. Any help here?


ty all!

When your stamp/brush is close to the subjects you want to keep you need to zoom in and use a hard-edge "stamp" of an appropriate size.

And, with both the cloning and healing you want to make sure the correct "source" is being used. I' not at my workstation but I believe Alt-Click will give you a source location.

Also, using masks with these tools will help you to touch things up.

Another trick is to use the Magnetic Lasso or the Pen Tool (for the best precision), cut out the difficult area along with some of the surrounding texture (excluding your subject) and promote that to a new layer.

Now you can concentrate on just the area that needs fixed without any other pixels to contaminate your fix.

All of what tonylong mentioned, plus make a new empty layer above the photo and use clone/healing brush on it, by selecting "sample current layer and below", then mask off those bleeds that bother you. Masking on and off will be easier than re-cloning when something bleeds over.

What FlyingPhotog said, but you don't necessarily have to promote the selection to a new layer.
If you create a selection around the area you want to clone (asphalt), and do not include the people, then you can clone within the selection without bleeding from the area outside the selection.

ty all....am at work rt now but will re-try when I get home. cant wait!