Eliminating a slight blemish with Elements - frustration

[padrepaul77]

I was tinkering with this picture, and for about an hour have had the hardest time removing a little black spot in the upper left part of the picture. This was the best I could do, and I'm not how noticeable it is or would be if I were to print it as an 8 x 10. I've tried everything; the eraser tool, the background eraser, the clone stamp, the brush, the pencil, and finally the healing brush, which seemed to help. I'm new to elements and post-processing, so any suggestions would be helpful. I liked the shot and tried to lighten up the subject as the original was darker - thought it was a nice shot of summer fun. Any help would be appreciated. I don't know why I had such a difficult time removing the object. Please help - it's after 1 and I've obsessed over this long enough for one night.

Thanks,
Paul

 

[Felix0890]

Here you go. Just use the clone tool with a ~75% opacity. The clone tool should never be used at 100% (some exceptions exist of course). If you end up with contrasty edges, you can use the blur tool to soften that up. I'm running low on battery juice on my laptop and have my screen res down so if if you see a smudge that I couldn't just stamp over it with a lower opacity like 25-40% to clean that up.