Using the Healing Brush, Patch Tool & Color Replacement Tools in Photoshop CS©

You can fade the opacity and blend mode of the Healing brush by immediately selecting Edit > Fade Healing Brush after using the tool.

Using the Healing brush with the blending mode set to Replace makes it behave more like the Clone Stamp tool (in that it doesn't automatically try to blend the source and destination), and blends noise more effectively while cloning.

You can use the Healing brush and Patch tool between two open documents. Simply option (Mac) /alt (Win) click in the source document and then clone in the destination document.

You can use the Healing brush and Patch tool on blank layers. Check the Use All Layers in the option bar.

To modify a selection while using the patch tool, simply hold down the shift key to add to the selection and/or the option (Mac)/alt (Win) key to subtract - just like the other selection tools.